


A Little Room to Breathe

by buckyno



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, Mentions of Suicide Attempts, Natasha Is a Good Bro, POV Multiple, Stucky - Freeform, Unbeta'd, except for peggy who is better than all of you, mentions of age of ultron but no spoilers, no one knows how to deal with feelings, peggy and bucky are bros, sam wilson has the patience of a saint, which is something i've wanted forever so yeah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-03-29 08:50:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3890083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckyno/pseuds/buckyno
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Title from the song A Little Room to Breathe by You Me at Six.  Steve's been looking for Bucky nonstop for months on end.  He's burning himself thin and ragged and has every intention to keep going until a lead brings him home.  Peggy has some things to tell him he may not want to hear but that didn't really matter, they would all end up doing what Peggy says anyway.  Honestly he and Bucky both should have t-shirts made: Do As Peggy Says, then maybe life would be a bit easier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Song url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX-e2QB556g&list=RDdX-e2QB556g  
> One day I will link things properly but today is not that day.

 

Steve and Sam have been in Kiev for going on three days. The bodies they found there have been in the city morgue for over two weeks according to the medical examiner they talked to, apparently Captain America’s popularity went beyond the States. The bodies also had the Winter Soldier written all over them and Hydra _branded_ into them though much more literally. Tell-tale tentacles framing a smiling skull all about the size of a quarter were branded into each victim’s foreheads. According to the ME it’d been done while they were still alive then they were shot execution style lined up in a row against the wall. No other evidence connected them to Hydra. Sam and Steve had looked for days, Steve was willing to take what was essentially the Winter Soldier’s word but Sam wasn’t so sure. The shit that kid went through messed him up, hell, just reading about it gave Sam more than a few nightmares. Who could say what the Soldier was seeing? Could he discern enemy from friend? Sam didn’t voice his concerns to Steve. He knew Steve had already thought about all the things he’s thought about and he knew Steve didn’t give a single fuck because his best friend was alive. Past the horror, the gore, and the heartbreak was a freaking miracle.

Sam wished Natasha would surface long enough to run-down the body count for solid proof those people had been marching to the tune of a Nazi death cult.  If only for his own piece of mind but it would be for Steve too.  Innocent people possibly being killed had to weigh heavily on his friend because that same dumb friend for some dumb reason thought he was supposed to hold up the entire world.  No matter the Soldier’s motive Steve was going to follow him to the ends of the Earth and Sam was going to follow Steve but they were starting to burn out.  Sam was a bit more ragged than Steve-supersoldier-Rogers, Steve was in a place mentally Sam couldn’t fathom—not for lack of trying.  What they needed was a break.  Time to regroup, breathe, go home for an honest to God cheeseburger.  Sam’s prayers would be answered by the last person he expected to call him.  Tony freaking Stark. 

“Hey Top Gun, tell Cap to charge his phone, also, _hi_.”  Tony didn’t sound cheery so much as very alert.  Sam glanced at the clock on the nightstand between his and Steve’s beds, the red numbers glared 4:17.  In the goddamned morning.  It was way too early for him to mentally convert what time it was in New York, he didn’t really care.  He knew Stark knew what time it was in Russia, that bastard.

“Is that Stark?”  Steve grumbled beneath a pile of blankets.  Sam could only see a tuft of blonde hair sticking out under it all.  He’d thought the serum would have kept him at optimal temperatures or whatever but Russian motels were cold even for Captain America.  The same Captain America who’s spent 70 years frozen under ice, needless to say the guy liked to keep warm.

“Am I on speaker?  You should put me on speaker,” Sam’s phone made an unfamiliar beep, “There already did it for you.”

“The hell—”

“All present say ‘Aye’, no?  Fine, Cap’s there with you though right?  Otherwise calling personally would be pretty pointless, could’ve just had Jarvis do it.”

Steve tossed the blankets off him and glared in the general direction of Sam’s hand, “I’m here Tony, what do you want.”  For some reason Sam found it comforting that even Steve Rogers was grumpy at four in the morning.

“Great, that’s…good.”  They hear him sigh heavily, “So, don’t freak out, but I found your boy.  Sort of.”

Steve went from zero to sixty, he was up out of the bed and grabbing the phone out of Sam’s palm in a split second.  He demanded without quite raising his voice ,“Where is he?”

“Cool it Capcicle, did you not hear me say ‘sort of’, I know I put it on speaker.”

“ _Tony_.”

“Okay, okay, so I told you Jarvis has been running facial recognition programs all over the world.  We’ve been focusing on the places your bff would likely pop up counting in what  we now know of Hydra and a little bit of Romanoff’s info about the guy—like a real little.  Then he started his whole Bucky Barnes Revenge Roadtrip thing, keeping everyone busy with presumably dead Hydra agents and the few burnt-out husks of those Hydra bases he left.  Anyway I’m trying to say since his trail his been cold I’ve had Jarvis go over some feeds, of basically the lesser likely places for him to show up.  Steve, we got video of him from six days ago at the Smithsonian.”

Steve was already throwing his things in the duffle he’d been living out of for the past eight months.  The only thing that made him stop, his face going an unhealthy white was what Tony said next, “At that neat little surprise I had Jarvis run the whole city over again and he popped up again.  He’s been to the same hospital Peggy Carter been staying.  Don’t make that face, I can hear the epic frowny face, I already checked in on her she’s fine but nobody remembers seeing Terminator.  But I mean, he is the Winter Soldier so isn’t that sort of his thing?”

Ever the calm in the storm of angsty superheroes Sam said, “He might not still be there, Steve.”

Steve let out a long breath, “It’s the freshest lead we’ve had in months.”

“Yeah man, I know.”  Sam swung his legs off the bed and hit the lights above his bed on, “Guess that means were going home.”

“I sent a StarkJet to Keiv twenty minutes ago.”  Tony told them leaving no room for argument.  There’d been a time when Steve would have told Tony to shove that plane where sun didn’t shine but that was because he could handle his own business his own way.  That was before the past came back to punch him in the face.

“Thanks, Tony.”  Steve meant it whole-heartedly.

Tony tsked, “Don’t mention it Team America, see you both in the land of the sort of free.”

Sam was beginning to realize prayers were double-edged swords.  Home though, that was the best idea he’d heard all day and an ultra-comfortable ride in a private StarkJet?  That thing was nicer than his own house.  It had an _espresso_ machine and _stewardesses_ —they were the only people on the plane! 

He would have enjoyed it more if he hadn’t slept most of the way.  There was only so much of Steve staring pensively out the window he could take.  When he woke up they were home.

Sam left Steve at the airfield declaring if he had to wear the same combination of clothes one more day he was going to scream.  Steve understood, mostly…okay, he would admit he didn’t get that at all.  Tony had his bike waiting for him, he strapped his duffle to the back and took off down roads he knew almost as well as Brooklyn.  D.C. wasn’t home to him like it was to Sam even so it was as close as he going to get for the time being.  Steve’s apartment was cold in every meaning of the word.  He’d had the heat shut off before he left but the place was so bare.  Steve had shelves of records and books of course, contained to their own little space, but walls that should have held framed smiling faces were empty.  No personal touches, not really, it was a place to sleep and keep track of his progress into the current century.  When he was a kid his mom had proudly pinned his sketches to the wall.  After she died Bucky had done the same thing.  All of his old sketches and photographs were public property now, much of it was in the Smithsonian, the rest in smaller museums around the country or so he’d been told.  He couldn’t bring himself to be angry about it, not anymore, not when Bucky had braved discovery to see it all himself.  Pieces of his old life had brought Bucky back.  Bucky was back from the dead and so was Steve.  Steve’s heart was taken from him that day on the train, he vowed to never let it be taken away again.  No one was going to take Bucky away from him again.  He just had to find him first.  Steve didn’t know if he could tell Bucky that he loved him, loved him with every breath in his body, but he would show him.  Protect him, keep him safe.  If only Bucky would let Steve, this one time, be the guy to do that.  It was time the blood stopped spilling for awhile, they needed rest.  Bucky the most of all.

Steve checked his emails and read a little while waiting for visiting hours to go see Peggy.  They would probably make an exception for him, and man was he never going to get used to that, but he didn’t want to interrupt Peggy’s sleep.  The first time he went to see her they’d told him routines were important to her, it helped her keep track of time.  He would tell Sam later, he wanted to talk to her alone.  Sam would get that.  Sam was good a getting the things he couldn’t put into words or chose not to tell him immediately.  He’d be pissed at him for not at least taking a nap.  Steve was on B.B. King though musically speaking, that would probably distract him long enough for Steve to wiggle his way out of getting hit with Sam’s “did everyone know Captain America was an idiot or was it just me” look.  When visiting hours rolled around Steve hadn’t even taken his shoes off yet.  Matter of fact his jacket was still on with his keys in his pocket.  Maybe he was out in the wild too long, just maybe.

Peggy was on the 4th floor of the D.C. Memorial hospital with other permanent residents.  The hospital was nice, at least it was to Steve who’d grown up with a similar but different version of what a hospital was.  He noticed people complained about the smell, disinfectant and death?  Bitterly he thought these people had no idea what the dying smelled like, how much pain they had to endure.  Modern medicine was amazing to him. More amazing then all of Tony’s holograms or ultrathin cell phones.  Seeing Peggy confined mostly to a hospital bed was still hard.  It took a couple of visits to realize despite everything Peggy was still Peggy, and he was grateful.

Today was a good day said her nurse when he arrived.  Peggy was upright, her hair pinned neatly and her eyes were wide and bright.  The smile she gave Steve made him give her his first real smile since he hit the road with Sam.  Her room had a lot of natural sunlight and quite a few vases of flowers of varying age and quality.  The freshest was a simple but elegant clear glass vase holding pure white orchids.  They were her favorite.

“You look good today Peggy.”  He said plopping down heavily next to her in the metal folding chair that was always there.

“Better than you at any rate.”  Peggy replied sharp as a tack.  Steve laughed rubbing the back of his neck trying to hide a blush.

“That’s not hard to do.”

“So modest, Steve, trust me when I tell you the jawline is working.”

 Sometimes she would lapse into silence for minutes at a time.  Steve adjusted.  He owed her all the time in the world. They chatted about insignificant things for a while when Steve not meaning to draw the conversation there yet innocently asked about the orchids.

“Oh, James brought them.  He knows a thing or two about flowers, did you know that?”

Steve shot up, “James?  W-wait, do you mean Bucky, you saw him?”  Tony had said Bucky had been there but he didn’t think he’d actually talked to Peggy.  At the most looked in on her for his mysterious reasons, God, Steve had no idea what to think or do.

Peggy suddenly looked surprised then angry not Steve but at herself, “Well, damn, I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”

Any irritation he might have felt was overtaken by loud ringing in his head.  When he was fourteen an older kid named Tommy O’Hara hit him in the head with a brick, the feeling in his head was sort of the same minus all the blood.  He’d told Bucky about it and he never saw O’Hara again.  Bucky.  Bucky had been there, he’d talked to Peggy—sought her out.  His chest ached.

“Did he—was he…”

Peggy huffed, “I suppose the cat's out of the bloody bag now.  Yes James was here, many times by now I believe.  Brings different flowers every time.  He told me about what he thought he was now and…about what’s been going on outside these walls.  I appreciated that by the way, no one else seem too keen to think I can handle anything beyond pudding flavors and hair rollers.”

“I’m sorry Peggy, I didn’t mean—”

“I know, Steven.”  She laid her hand gently on his arm.

“What did Bucky come to you for?”  He tried not feel hurt.  Why had he gone to Peggy and not him?

“At first we talked about the Commandos, after he explained how he was still alive.  He gave me the sugar-coated version, refused to go into detail about anything.  Then we talked about me, my family, always so charming—even with that hair of his.”

“That’s…all?”  The air in the room felt too thin to him.

“You want to know if he remembers you.”  She stated.

Steve pulled away from her and pressed his palms into his eyes, “I feel like that’s selfish.”

“That’s because I’m afraid it is…But Steve, I don’t think I have the answers you want, I am sorry.  I can tell you what I saw in him.  James is so strong, he wouldn’t tell me what they did to him but I could tell, he’s fighting it and I think he’s winning.”  Peggy took a breath, “My heart breaks for him.  And you.  You have to stop though, stop chasing him, let him come to you when he’s ready.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“You have to try.  Promise me.”

Steve did.  When he left Peggy he went straight to Sam’s.  Watching Sam’s face shutter through relief then sympathy then worry was more harrowing than he thought it would be, he missed the days when people said he was hard to read.  His life had been nothing but searching for Bucky for so long now it was hard imagining what he did before.  It ended up being a lot of running.  Once in the morning with  Sam, once after lunch and one more time at night.  Slowly he continued his life like nothing had happened.  More or less.  Sam pointed out it was like they were coming back from a tour of duty and he wasn’t really wrong. Steve attacked his lists with military fervor.  When he checked in with Tony about Winter Soldier sightings (Steve conviced himself that techinically didn’t count as running after Bucky espically since after the Smithsonian and the Hospital Bucky hadn’t been seen again) he understood at least half of the man’s pop culture references.  He was irrationally happy about that.

Things were returning to what Sam called “superhero normal” when Natasha sent Steve a text.  The text read “Lucy I’m home” with three winking smiley faces after it.  A few days after she sent another one asking him “Did you know you had an assassin living on your roof?” followed by an wholly inappropriate line of gun emojis and oddly enough a plusing pink heart.  He rooted himself in place.  Every muscle in his body was screaming to go look.  Instead he texts Natasha back, “Bucky?”

Natasha must have been waiting for him because her response comes a second later, “I don’t kno abt that but I’m pretty sure the Winter Soldier has been up here for a few days recently.”

“Wait are you on my roof right _now_?”

“Obviously.  Bring snacks.”

Honestly most of the food in his apartment qualified as snack food.  He grabbed the first thing he saw with dark chocolate on the label and took the stairs up, he ran faster than the elevator anyway.  Natasha was waiting for him on the ledge with a small smile, “You get as much roof-time as Clint.”

“You talked to Hawkeye?”

“Yup.”

“You kick his ass?”

“Yup.”  Natasha had made Barton paint her toenails, Budapest violet, and made him make sure her cat was fed while she was in D.C.  Maybe Clint made her a little soft it didn’t matter because in the end he’d definitely suffered.  Her cat was never a huge fan of Clint.

“Good.”

“Hmn.”  She gave him a sly look, “You look like you’re about vibrate out of your skin.  That my chocolate?”

“Yeah, here.”  Steve tossed the bag and sat next to her on the brick ledge.  He scanned the roof for anything that said Bucky had been there but nothing stood out to him.  It didn’t look like there’d been anyone there assassin or otherwise.

“If you’re looking for a bedroll and a hotplate you’re not going to find them.  Your boy probably wasn’t doing much sleeping.”  Natasha tore into the bag, made a dissatisfied face then ate a round truffle anyway.

“Why does everyone keep calling him ‘my boy’?”  Steve asked annoyed.

“Because he is your boy, Cap.”  She replied rolling her eyes.  Natasha swore she was surrounded by children.

Steve shook his head, pink rising on his cheeks, “Should I even ask where you’ve been?”

“No.”

“That’s what I thought.  I’m glad to have you back Natasha, I mean it.”

“I know.  You’re lost without me.  Now, you want me to run you through this or what.  It's very…open out here.”  In Natasha’s personal opinion Steve should be next to some kind of cover at all times.  Half because there was always somebody gunning for Captain American and half because the last she heard the Winter Solider had kill orders on him.  Steve was the only person she’d seen survive a hit by the Soldier and she really wanted to make sure that remained the case.  The unshakable faith Steve had in his friend wasn’t something she shared.  Evidence of the Soldier could be taken in a hopeful way or the he was probably there to kill Steve way.  Why else would the Soldier stake out Steve’s apartment?  She knew Steve had feelings toward the man the Soldier used to be but she didn’t think that man existed anymore.

“He,”  Natasha started acutely aware of the way Steve would flinch everytime she used the Winter Soldier to refer to his old friend, “was up here a few nights.  There’s a scuff where your sitting where he had his rifle.  He probably laid flat to remain hidden, he wouldn’t have slept.  This was a sniper’s nest.  You should come to terms, Steve, he could have been waiting for you to come back.  Tired, weaker, not expecting him to be there with the perfect shot.”

Steve set his jaw, “That doesn’t matter.”

“I’m pretty sure it does.”

“It doesn’t Natasha.  He was here and he didn’t do anything, even if he wanted to he didn’t.  Bucky went to see Peggy, he talked with her, she never felt threatened by him.  Bucky won’t hurt me.”

“He already did, Steve.”  She was never very good a coddling people.

“That wasn’t him.”

“It’s not that simple, trust me I know.”

Steve trusted her.  She was one of the few people he _did_ trust in his new century of constant information.  Natasha didn’t always tell him everything but she never lied to him.  She was trying to be straight with him, to prepare him for the worst.  The worst had already happened.  The worst was a file on the Winter Soldier and all the inhumane things Hydra had done to Bucky Barnes printed formally within. 

“Thanks, for telling me.  You’re aware of the dead Hydra agents we found?”  He asked her.

Natasha nodded and spoke around another piece of chocolate, “Just recently, Tony sent me the files he had.  I’ve only made it through a dozen names but they all checked out.  Hydra.  The way he took those people out looked personal.  I think he’s searching for something in particular though, don’t know what.  Yet.”

Steve thought that too.  Unfortunately he and Sam had been too neck deep in blood and burning bases to find anything substantial.  Chasing after Bucky had been like trying to hold on to a hurricane but the harder it became the more determine he became to tighten his grip.  Apparently that was the opposite of what Bucky needed.  He wasn’t sure if Natasha’s information was going to help him refrain from doing that.  Probably not.  Whenever he felt like calling Tony and getting back on the trail he thought about how Peggy was still great at giving death-stares and would probably shoot at him again.  He was reasonably certain she had a gun stashed somewhere in that hospital room.

“You gonna follow it?”  He asked.  He wanted to know what Bucky was looking for but he wouldn’t ask her to do it.  It wasn’t his place and it wasn’t her responsibility.

The smile, despite her claims of not actually knowing everything, was all-knowing, “Obviously.”

Steve grinned, elated, and offered lunch but Natasha refused seemingly content to live on chocolate and secrets alone.  However she did urge Steve go out for food once in a while.  She didn’t like the idea of him in any open place but he was doing that every day with his ludicrous running regiment, which Natasha would pretend not to know about, if he was out there anyway way he might as well try and act like a real person.  He’d almost been there before S.H.E.I.L.D. collapsed.  Steve had been becoming apart of the world.  Natasha could see he needed that, not everyone was built like her.  She didn’t expect them to be.  Steve said he would take her advice, there was a diner he’d been wanting to try anyway, she could tell he was sincere about.  He looked lighter knowing the Soldier had been so close.  It worried Natasha to no end.  Because while she didn’t expect anyone to be built like her she knew the Winter Soldier in fact was.  There was more to it but honestly it was a terrifying experience to poke those memories in her head that were gift-wrapped in blood and snow and heartache.  She clamps down on the line of thought with a metaphorical stiletto heel.

“I have to get going Steve.”  Natasha said genuinely sorry.  It was good seeing him face-to-face again.  Satellite imagery didn’t give all that righteousness justice.  He wouldn’t appreciate her checking in on him so sneakily though she didn’t think he would be too surprised.

Steve asks hopefully, “You’re sticking around for a while then?”

“For a while.”  She lets Steve walk her downstairs and out the lobby.  He seemed a little affronted Natasha had taken the fire escape all the way up and was fully prepared to do the same for the return trip.  Steve Rogers could be so unreal sometimes.

Natasha kept an eye on Steve from afar making sure he made good on his words, also keeping a lookout for a tell-tale glint of a sniper’s rifle.  Steve would periodically pause whatever he was doing to look around pensively, senses picking up on something not being quite right.  The hope Natasha saw flicker over his face as he scanned rooftops and alleys made enough guilt rear inside her to convince herself to back off a little bit more.  If she was somewhat anxious it was because the Winter Soldier had been eerily silent for so long.  Bodies weren’t dropping anymore with his signature on them, that didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t taking any one out—he could easily make a death look accidental or put leads in place to some other suspect, new Hydra bases weren’t coming into a fiery light though either.  Whatever his reasons for allowing himself to be seen by cameras remained a mystery too because he hasn’t been seen since.  Natasha suspected the Soldier wanted to get Steve back to D.C.  where he had been ready and waiting with the perfect shot lined-up.  Yet the Soldier hadn’t made a move, did the opposite.  And wasn’t that just confusing?  She doesn’t get very far with wading into the mess that was the Winter Soldier.  Thanks to Tony Stark and his crazy creation’s fucking robot army.

It takes that same robot army, which at least wasn’t from space because Steve was getting tired of what he was mentally calling Space Bullshit, to make Steve appreciate his life in D.C.  During the fight he’s distracted.  When the Avengers need him most he works through it, his mind is full of Bucky.  Fear.  The world was falling apart, again, and he had no idea where his friend was, whether he was safe or not.  It's hard to pull his head away from Bucky when Ultron hits them all so personally, right where they try to hide their hearts away.  Pulls them out to face what they refuse to on a daily basis.  When the team pulls out of it they're worse for wear then Ultron goes after them physically.  Threatening what they hold dear.  Ultron makes a point to say “Who they love most.”  Tony practically kidnaps Pepper into an underground bunker somewhere along with Jane Foster.  Natasha and Clint just look at one another, ready for whatever may come.  Bruce gets a sad little smile and doesn’t talk about it.  Steve doesn’t know what the fuck to do.  He had no idea where the person he loved most in the world even was, how could he protect a ghost?  The decision is taken away.  Ultron sends drones after Peggy and Steve knows he’ll be too late.  Stark’s planes aren’t fast enough, neither is the Iron Man, nor Thor with all his godly abilities.  He thinks Ultron never intended to target the whole team, just Steve.  He was their leader and if Ultron was anything it was logical.  A strategic attempt to cut off the head of the snake because those drones were on their way toward Peggy long before Ultron told them what he was going to do in that wrathful, reasonable voice.

Natasha, Steve and Sam showed up at the hospital expecting the worst.  Steve had himself squared away, a brave soldier ready to face the firing squad.  Steve could handle dying, he couldn’t handle Peggy being the one taking a bullet meant for him.  They’d arrived to crumpled metal heaps littering the ground.  Robot parts stretched out as far as a mile away.  Shot right out of the sky.  Steve ran to Peggy’s room stopping for half a millisecond before throwing the doors open ignoring the protesting voices of the nurses.  She was resting in the bed peacefully, a vase full of soft violet chrysanthemums on her bedside table, the orchids long gone.

Sneaking quietly out was off the table as Peggy blinked herself awake.  She has some trouble coming out of long sleeps, taking quiet moments readjusting herself looking through the notes kept near to help but when she sees Steve her eyes widen in a mix of guilt and surprise, “Oh, dear, you’re not supposed to be here.”

Steve gives her a watery smile, thinking at first Peggy had forgotten his miraculous return again.  Her reaction was much different than then though. Her eyes went to the window then back to Steve unintentionally sparking Steve into motion, promise to let Bucky come to him momentarily forgotten.  He rushes to the window, forcing it open and poking his head out catching  the end of a rifle’s barrel glinting in the sunlight over the edge of the roof three floors above him.  Steve holds his breath then the gun is gone and he could hear heavy boots running away.

“Steve, don’t…”  He can barely hear Peggy with pulling all his senses toward those boots.  Steve clutches the window sill hard enough to crack it.  He pushes away and Peggy looks soft and proud.

“How long has he been here?”  Steve asks unsure if he should.

“Since yesterday.  We watched you,”  Peggy flicks her wrist to the usually silent flat screen hanging on the wall, “the rest of the Avengers on the news until those things came here.  I think he keeps an armory on my roof.”  She added fondly.

Any residual stupid jealously Steve had about the situation dissipated quickly in the wash of warmth he felt at someone refer to Bucky positively instead of the constant guarded words and suspicion he garnered from everyone else in his life.  More than that, Peggy was actively protecting him, like Bucky had just protected her.

As capable as Bucky proved to be Steve had to get Peggy someplace more secure.  That was a taller order with Peggy’s medical need taken into account, Stark got it done.  Ultron didn’t stop a single thwarted attempt to cripple the Avenger’s morale.  They returned to New York prepared to fight a war and a war was what they got.  The aftermath made the damage done by Loki look like a traffic accident.  A shiny new S.H.I.E.L.D. reared up seemingly out of nowhere to Steve’s ire and he had to stay in New York to deal with the wave of PR that had to be done everytime they saved the world because somehow their mere existence was the reason bad guy’s kept trying to blow up the world’s major cities.  As if the bad guys wouldn’t being doing bad guy stuff if the Avengers weren’t there.  They would, the only difference was that they would succeed.  The general public got that, embraced them whole-heartedly.   The problem was the media and some of the more opinionated and not to mention loud politicians, which was to say all of them.  Every one of them had an opinion and none of them cared about the actual truth.  Enough was enough, he was ready to leave the spotlight.  Steve hated this, all of it.  New York was supposed to be home.  Maybe it would be again but not while the spotlight was shining down on all of them like the Sahara sun.  Tony gave him a ride back to D.C. during the early morning hours of a Sunday.

It was strange the way the world put itself back together after a calamity.  There was always the same outcries directly after then the voices leveled out, the buildings were repaired and people…made themselves forget while they somehow convinced their selves it could never happen again.  D. C. was the same.  The 24 hour new stations kept talking but the people were starting to bounce back.  Steve kept a cap low over his eyes every time he left his apartment but his neighbors already knew who he was.  They didn’t say anything except for a couple of wide-eyed exhalations of excitement from the kids on his floor.  He ate at his diner once every week perfectly aware of how easy it was making his schedule to keep track of.  Natasha and Sam both thought he should’ve moved and they both knew he wouldn’t, not when he knew Bucky had been there for whatever reason.  Steve was making it easy for Bucky to find him.  And Bucky did.

Steve would remember everything about that day.  That it had been raining like hell, that the diner was nearly empty, the coffee was better than usual.  His eyes immediately found Bucky’s familiar figure sitting with his chair pressed against the far wall of the diner with a perfect line of sight of all the windows.  Steve wasn’t sure what to expect when he finally saw him, maybe something like what the grainy Smithsonian footage showed him.  But Bucky looked…good.  His hair was swept back into a loose bun, his eyes standing out harshly even in the dim light of the diner.  Bucky’s clothes were a modern but worn, a black leather jacket over a thin grey shirt and a pair dark jeans.  His beard was gone but he wasn’t clean shaven.  He looked like he fit in.  The waitress sent him flirtatious little looks but they went ignored, the full force of his attention was on Steve.

A terrible fear struck Steve, for the tiniest bit of the smallest second he almost wanted to run back out the door and he didn’t understand it.  He’d never wanted something more and yet he couldn’t bring himself to move forward for an unknown passage of time until Bucky moved his gaze to the coffee cup steaming in his gloved hands.  Steve swallowed and let pure relief wash over him in place of phantom fear.  Relief Bucky was alive, willing to see him, maybe even _wanting_ to see him.  His friend didn’t look hurt, from what he could tell, and smelled delicately of mint when Steve got closer.  Steve pulled out the diner chair and sat down in it, it felt oddly final and oddly like a weight had been lifted from his back.

He opened his mouth.  Then shut it again, stared dumbly then for some idiot reason his mouth decided to ask, “Things have changed, huh, Buck?”

Those startling beautiful eyes were again on him, pinning him into that moment of time, “Everything does.  ‘Cept for Captain freaking America.”  His voice was smooth, unemotional, but his accent wavered between something like a 1940’s Brooklyn boy and a soft Russian lilt.  Steve didn’t know how to feel about that.

“I’ve changed too, Bucky.”  Steve said hoping it was what Bucky wanted to hear, especially since it was the truth.

The corner of Bucky’s lips ticked up in too familiar smirk though it died as fast as it appeared, Steve wanted to cry, “Not from where I’m sitting, pal.”

Steve shakes his head wanting to argue that point.  He doesn’t, he leans forward and Bucky leans back out of arms reach.  Steve can’t help the heated prickling in his eyes.

“I missed you so much.”  Steve manages in one long breath.

Bucky grasps his coffee tighter with one hand the other he moves away from the cup carefully.  Steve can hear the whir of mechanics when Bucky moved his arm and rememberd the sound it made slamming into his shield.

“Peggy said…”  Bucky makes a fist with his metal hand, “I should see you.”

“I’m glad.”

A small crease grows between Bucky’s brow, “Nyet. No.  I’m sorry.  This was a bad idea.” 

He moved fluidly up and so fast Steve didn’t think about the consequences of grabbing a previously brainwashed super soldier’s arm, “Bucky, no! Please—”

Surprisingly Bucky did stop.  He turned stock-still, eyes locked on where Steve’s hand clutched him tightly.  Steve could see the muscles working in Bucky’s jaw and immediately let go, “I didn’t mean to…I just…please don’t leave again.”

Bucky looked away and walked out.  Steve stood there in shock.  The waitress tried to address him but it went unheard.  Too late he rushed out of the diner only to find no trace of Bucky on the rainy city streets.

Four agonizing months passed.  Steve spent them checking the roofs and going to that same diner every single day.  He told Peggy that Bucky came to see him and she was actually surprised, Bucky still came to see her though less frequently than he used to but he hadn’t said anything about talking to Steve.  Steve didn’t know what that meant and tried not to jump to any bad assumptions.  He did have a habit of leaping without think'ing though and he couldn’t quell the stir of anxiety in the pit of his stomach.  He’d thought if he could’ve just seen Bucky once he would feel better when in fact it had been the opposite, he hurt.  Everywhere with the welling pain of missing someone, loss and love mingling together like oil and blood.  It hurt worse now more than ever.  He doesn’t expect the phone call he receives one chilly Tuesday night.  It's Peggy, her voice wavers and Steve fears she’s having a bad day but it soon became clear she was upset for a whole other reason.

“Steve?  I haven’t seen him for three entire weeks.  The last time he seemed…not in a good way Steve, nothing I said helped very much.  I’m so worried Steve.”  Peggy was wise enough not to use Bucky’s name over an unsecured line.  Steve still wished he had a more secure way to speak to her, if someone—like, say a Black Widow, happened to be listening in it wouldn’t take much to figure out who Peggy was talking about.  She’d promised not to bug his house but she didn’t say anything about Peggy’s room.

“I’ll be there in five minutes.”  Steve tells Peggy firmly.  He doesn’t trust the line, doesn’t trust himself to not crush his cell phone into dust if she tells him anymore.

He doesn’t stop to let his mind go a mile-a-minute and instead lets his legs do just that.  His legs carry him to his bike and he races across town, zig-zagging through traffic too fast and too focused on his destination rather than where he was.  If he weren’t a super soldier with enhanced senses and reflexes there would have been a six car pile-up on the overpass to the hospital with Captain America’s name all over it.  The Bucky Steve grew up with would have throttled him.  If Peggy knew she would have throttled him too.  And Sam.  Basically everyone would want to hit him over the head with the nearest blunt object and he would deserve it.  He tucked away that guilt for later, not healthy but well…you can take the boy out of the Catholic school but you can never really take the Catholic school out of the boy. 

Barely avoiding an empty ambulance Steve rushes his bike through the narrow emergency lane skidding to a stop at the automatic doors.  It takes less than a minute for him to beat the elevators to Peggy’s floor.  Objectively he knew by the little she told him over the phone Bucky hasn’t had contact in weeks but that makes him all the more frantic.  Peggy was the opposite.  She was mostly a stern sort of calm Steve had only seen on her face in dire situations.

Steve takes a pad on the crowded table next to her bed, the flowers there where Bucky usually left his were dying, he writes _Where is he_ on the paper and holds it up close enough for her to read.  She shakes her head and furrows her brow, thinking.

Peggy takes the pad from him and Steve thinks her writing will be shaky and hesitant like her memory sometimes was instead her words flowed in a fine well-practiced script perfected in private English schools decades ago: _I can only suspect, he’s strayed away before, and very far but he’s always returned within the week.  We we’re talking about Istanbul the last I spoke to him._

“You think I should start there?”  Steve asks her softly.

“It’s our best bet honestly.  And Steve, you know he swept this room himself for surveillance.  There’s no one listening.”

“That was weeks ago.”

Steve is torn between asking Tony for a ride overseas knowing they’ll figure out why and trying to get out of the country commercially as low-key as he can.  One was definitely faster and while he didn’t know why Bucky had stopped seeing literally the only person he’d made a real connection with since he’s return to himself Steve couldn’t shake the feeling time was of the essence.  A lot of things could happen in three weeks.  Hydra could happen.  Government-led teams out to capture the Winter Soldier could happen, and none of them cared Bucky Barnes was fucking war hero.  He settles on not Tony but Rhodey who helps him procure a ride on a military transport plane to Turkey with some other soldiers who were pretty excited to have Captain America coming along with them and it was nice for Steve to be surrounded by a bunch of wise-cracking soldiers again.  He smiles genuinely and jokes with them.  It was hard not to think of the Commandos, their laughs and voices echoed in the faces of the men and women around him.  Steve closed his eyes, feeling strangely safe and allowed himself thirty minutes of sleep.  He gets texts from an angry Tony while he was out but ignores it until his feet were back on solid ground.

The message he sends back with more abbreviations than anyone was prepared for stated simply he was safe and taking a little trip for the good of his soul.  Sure it was sarcastically stated but not really a lie, Bucky Barnes _was_ his soul.  All he got back was grudging acceptance from Stark and a promise to relay the same message to anyone else who asked for him. 

Istanbul was beautiful.  Brighter than he imagined and loud not with the same mechanical buzz of the big American cities but with the same pounding in his ears when he got to his brink in his run, like blood rushing and breathing too hard.  With time feeling like it was slipping away from him and the hustle of the city the call to prayer helped him keep track of the hours.  First thing he did was get a room in the most unsuspecting hotel he could find then he combed the newsfeeds, papers, and internet for the signs Natasha had taught him to look for.  Unexplained damages, bodies like from before Bucky returned to D.C., generally suspicious activity that could be attributed to somebody with the Winter Soldier’s skills.  It's surprisingly easy.  A break-in at the one of the country’s military installations was reported, and only reported due to the serious amount of noise that accompanied the break-in, though the officials there say nothing was stolen and that the break-in was a part of a scheduled security test they themselves had okayed they just hadn’t realized the damage that could happen.  Nobody believed them and neither did Steve.  It was kind of loud for Bucky who for the longest time was considered a ghost.  Even so the way the situation was being handled piqued Steve’s interest enough for him to check it out.  

Meanwhile he showed Bucky’s picture, a modern one he drew himself, to the types of people he knew Bucky wouldn’t be too paranoid to show his face to: street vendors, kids playing, and the types a person had to interact with to get anywhere.  The language barrier was there but not as big as a problem as he was expecting.  The expectations there were nearly zero.  Sam and him hadn’t much luck with the “milk carton” way when they began their search what seemed like years ago but every now and then that one in a million person saw something.  Steve just needed to do _something_ while he figured out how to get information on the break-in.  He couldn’t just walk up to them with questions, they might be fine with Captain America but to Steve’s understanding that wasn’t the case with the actual America.  It turns out he doesn’t have to, it also turns out Tony Stark is a lying liar who should not be trusted with anything ever because Natasha shows up without an ounce of apology and enough spy hardware to cause national concern less than a day in the country.

“Cap,” she  says calmy as she slides into the room through an open window, “I was in the neighborhood, thought I’d say hi.  Hi.”  They were all spending way too much time with one another.

“Natasha, no.”

“Natasha, yes.”

“Things have happened, its different now.  Let me handle this one my own.”

“Aw, Steve, I thought we were gonna do the thing.”

“What are you talking about?”

Natasha sighed and drops the black duffle bag that had been slung over her shoulder on the bed, “I’ll show you later but it was a thing.  And you’ll change your mind after I tell you what I know.”

“I don’t need a babysitter.”  Steve dismisses her, angry that if Bucky knew he was there he definitely wasn’t going to show himself now the Widow was there.

“I’m not your babysitter, Steve, I’m your friend.  Remember?”

He shuts up, lets his shoulders sag, “Sorry, I just—”

“I understand Steve.  Honestly I do.  This isn’t something you can do on your own…now, are you ready to let me help because I literally mean you can’t do this on your own.”  Natasha balanced herself on his kitchenette’s countertop, less spider more cat. 

Steve makes a “go on” gesture and Nat grins a bit too eager, “I’m guessing you’re aware of the Turkish base being basically busted through, right?”

“Right.”

“We both know that’s not the Winter Soldier’s MO but I can tell you it was definitely him.  I hacked into their surveillance that night, the light isn’t great and they really need to do something about the quality of their security but it was him all right.  He wasn’t exactly trying to hide.”  She pulls out a sleek laptop pre-loaded with the images she’d described.

Steve watched a grainy video of an empty concrete corridor, just as his impatience was getting to him a chunk of the wall flew out and the footage was filled with mostly smoke and some more flying rubble.  The video flickered in and out in lines of distorted snow, before the video went completely black Steve spots a tell-tale metal arm only for a fraction of a second.  What Natasha considered “obvious” evidence was less than he would have liked but more than he could have hoped for so soon.

“Do you know why Bucky did this, what was he looking for?”  Steve played the video over again and Natasha shrugged.

“All I know is they don’t have him.  As far as I can tell no one does.  Winter Soldier was in and out of there before the military could muster even half an appropriate response to the intrusion.  Hit ‘em like a battering ram.  Nothing the base had on file went missing but we both know that means shit.  He knew exactly what he was looking for and where to find it.”

“What do _you_ think he was after?”

“Information.  I think that’s what he was doing when you and Sam were not-so-hot on the trail.  It’s what I did after I got out.  I went over some of those destroyed bases, he was doing more than just going on a murder revenge roadtrip—don’t give me that look Rogers, that’s what Tony called it.”

Steve scrubs the two-day scruff on his neck and asks, “Well then, what now?”

“Snatch and grab.”

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Don’t worry this is the fun part, buck-up…see what I did there?”

“Oh my God, Natasha.”

A snatch and grab was basically this: gather intel on who was there the night the Winter Soldier ringed the doorbell and…abduct them.  Natasha volunteered herself for the abducting bit while she had Steve waiting as the getaway driver on the shadiest motorcycle he’d ever seen.  The thing creaked when they sat on it and he wasn’t too confident about adding another body, said body turned out to be a large bearded man in military fatigues who was also unconscious over the Black Widow’s shoulders in a fireman’s carry.  A Widow’s Bite was attached to the side of the man’s face, Steve cringed in sympathy.

The man’s name was Emre.  He had three kids and love for spicy tea, Natasha was very good at her job.  He also noted a man he described as a “god of death” cutting a path to the base’s interior only to reemerge heartbeats later with what looked like a very old mainframe computer.  There was no big secret file room it had just been a regular storage room anyone was allowed to go in and out of.  The Turkish military there wanted to clean it out to make room for some vending machines or something until the guy with the metal arm rolled in to fuck their shit up and though that metal arm guy bashed a few fellas around pretty good he hadn’t killed anyone.   Steve let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding.  Natasha said nothing.  She zapped Emre with another Widow’s Bite and deposited him by the nearest hospital.

“If Bucky wanted something on that computer then he’s going to need the tools to do it.  I doubt he brought much with him from D.C.”  Steve said after they returned to his overly warm room.

“My thoughts exactly.  However…this type of loud entrance really isn’t like him.  What happened with S.H.I.E.L.D. aside—those were orders, otherwise he’s trained to be silent and unseen.  The target was a soft one, why be so brutal about it?”  They’d picked up a Hershey’s bar Natasha insisted to have on the way back, Hershey’s was apparently a world-wide thing now and for some reason that made Steve smile.  She ate it with zero grace.

“What are you getting at?”  He knew, he didn’t want to say out loud because…well, just because.

“The Winter Soldier you’ve described to me sounded relatively stable.  This is not stable, Steve.”

“I know.”

Natasha eyed him, unbelieving but she stuffed the rest of the candy bar in her mouth anyway.  In a muffled voice she replied, “Whatever you say, Cap.”

They spent the night doing an internet search of all the computer repair shops in the area, betting on Bucky’s direct and violent approach meaning he wouldn’t waste time by leaving the city especially not with the military on the lookout for him.  The shop they fixated on had a break-in too and had been there a while meaning they would more than likely have some older parts lying around.  Natasha suits-up and gives Steve a vague “I got this one, take a nap you’re looking a little haggard there hero” because what could happen at an old computer repair shop?

A lot of things apparently.  Natasha doesn’t come back for hours. At the set of the third hour Steve hurries toward the shop himself.  The place did not look like the tiny picture the local news snapped of it for their blog.  One of the  large windows  was shattered, the fold-down protective bars was forced up by something with a lot of strength.  Someone.  Inside of the store was evidence of a small-scale war zone.  The worst was lingering around Steve’s mind when Natasha stepped out of the shadows from a tiny staircase that led down to some type of sublevel.  She held one of her arms at the elbow, a small wince on her face.

“Nat—”

“The Winter Soldier is here.”

Steve stops, “ _What_?  Where?  Are you okay?”

“Yeah, he just got the drop on me.  Nothing’s broken.  We had a little bit of a scuffle though,”  she nods towards the devastation of the shop, “or maybe I got the drop on him.  Place looked deserted when I got here.  I was looking through the hardware when he got the drop on me…He looked…off.”  She wanted to say “scared”, but that wasn’t fitting in what she knew about the Winter Soldier and it would put Steve off-balance too.  He needed to be solid to face what was haunting the basement below their feet as if it were a grave.

“He spat some not so nice things at me in a hundred different languages, sent me through the window and disappeared down the stairs.  He’s barricaded it so I just started talking to him through the door.  I just got him to tell me to go the fuck away in Russian when you showed up.  Counting it as a win.”

Steve soaks that in and doesn’t take a single step before Natasha adds, “He’s not okay.”

“I know.”  He set his jaw and clenched his teeth so hard it was almost painful, ready for a possible fight.

The basement door is narrow and made of brittle wood but there is a huge amount of weight behind it, Steve can tell that with a simple press of his hand.  He calls out, “Bucky?”

He’s answered with a thunderous crash and Steve’s instincts have him kicking the door open sending everything behind it flying.  The basement is full of metal shelves, most had been propped up against the door blocking it effectively from both sides.  Bucky hadn’t just been trying to keep anyone out, he’d been trying to keep himself in.  Steve see’s a shift in the shadows the dull light of the single hanging lightbulb shined off the metal of Bucky’s arm.  His friend had pushed the remaining shelves down around him making it look like he was in a cage.  The mainframe he’d stolen sat in a corner with a newer screen attached to it.  The screen had a fist-sized hole in it giving Steve a sick feeling of similarity, he still heard a digitized voice teling him his life resulted in a zero sum at night.

Bucky breaks the silence with barely a whisper, “You shouldn’t be near me.”  He glares at Steve with real venom, with the eyes Steve were confronted with on the streets of D.C., the eyes of the Winter Soldier.

Steve’s voice broke, “Bucky—”

“The mission…the mission isn’t—”, Bucky caught himself with a gas--forcing air into his lungs.  Steve advanced a few quick steps before remembering what he was doing. 

“I’m a threat.”  Bucky said louder through clenched teeth, “To you.  To Everyone.”

“I can handle you.”  Confidence thrums through Steve’s words but they mean something different to him.   _I'll take care of you_.

A dark, bitter laugh clawed its way out of Bucky, “No.  You can’t.  Maybe you could take me if you went all out.  But you wouldn’t because you couldn’t.  The Winter Soldier down for the count and you just _left me there_.”  He takes a deep breath that nearly rattles, “You should have shot me in the fucking head.”

“NO!”  Steve roars like it’s the worst thing that could have happened.  He drops to his knees to  grip a piece shelving acting like a bar around Bucky.  Bucky flinches back and Steve is immediately sorry.  Steve wants to tell Bucky to stop talking.  Stop saying all the things he was afraid to hear…except it’s the most Bucky had said to him in a lifetime and both feelings are too painful to do much about.

Bucky’s eyes gleam more grey than blue in the faded yellow light, he keeps going without mercy for either of them, “I tried to do it myself.  But it turns out that was one of those things they drove in pretty hard with the programming.”  He didn’t know why he was telling Steve all that shit.  Maybe he needed to justify why he hadn’t done the world a favor and offed himself already.

“Buck,”  Steve started, “You were…Peggy said you were doing alright.  I know that’s not, I know things will never the same.  Please tell me what happened.  Why are you here?”

Bucky’s face went blank and he canted his head to the side, “Zola.”

“Zola’s gone.”  Steve was a afraid.  Sam had warned him about relapses and other assorted secret bombs that could be waiting to go off inside of Bucky’s head.  He didn’t care about them, never would, he just wanted to make Bucky feel safe and loved again.  Everything else was inconsequential.

“No…I remembered.  I _know_ you. I _know_ what I did.  I’ve been trying to…to…”  Bucky screams, his hands gripping his head tightly.

 Natasha appeared next to Steve in time to hold him back, “Don’t.  He’s fighting the programming.  If you touch him things could get dicey.”  Like the Winter Soldier trying to kill them both.

Long minutes drag by and Bucky screams until he can’t anymore.  Steve can feel the hot streams of tears down his face, doesn’t care, Natasha’s steel grip on his shoulder never wavers.  When he finally stops all the light in his eyes is gone.  There’s nothing there.

“I don’t know what to do.”  Steve said to Natasha.

She believed the Soldier should be in a secure facility she says instead, “Take him home.  The catatonia will pass.  See to it that he’s around good things when he wakes up.”

 

 

James Buchannan Barnes wakes up a two days after he’s more or less smuggled back into the United States by the Black Widow and Captain America.  The constant buzz in his brain is always present but when he wakes up it's blessedly muted.  The first face he saw was Captain America, also known as Steve Rogers, asset for the…he stops the train of thought and focuses only on the face and not on file his brain supplies upon seeing it.  Steve smiles, small, restrained.  Bucky thought that was wrong.

He was out of his combat suit.  The modifications he’d made with Peggy’s helpful input had made it feel less like a straightjacket, without it he felt exposed.  Peggy, he’d gotten her an amber box in Turkey, it was lost now.  She’d understand.  Steve was talking to him and tried to focus on the words but he can’t.  He’s too angry.  The point had been to stay away from Steve but he’d fucked that up, got sloppy because…oh right, he’d been really really pissed off.  Bucky had remembered.  Not everything, but enough.

Steve is still talking.  Bucky makes an annoyed sound, “Shut up, punk.” 

The smile on Steve’s face transforms to something brilliant and blinding.  Bucky thinks it looked right.  He tries to smile back and knows he doesn’t do that great of a job.  Peggy had helped with that too.

“Zola still exists.  He’s alive.”  He thinks of Brooklyn and lets it into his voice.  He thinks of the war, let’s the fear go and keeps the experience.  He thinks of Zola’s face and only focuses on his anger and none of the pain.

Steve blinks, “I believe you.  Tell me how.”

Bucky tells him what he knew.  He’d remembered Zola’s plan for faux immortality only after one of Peggy’s stories jumbled something loose, a story about a certain hypnotist after the war.  Zola coding a program to be all he was and more.  A piece of him had been in the mainframe Bucky had retrieved, a fraction of what was left.  There were things he’d needed to know about himself only Zola knew and the mainframe told him.  Probably too much.  The piece of Zola tried to activate an old trigger within him but it was too old, too many times in the chair had broken the earliest of the programming.  The red room had been a boon to him for first time of his long life.  Bucky wouldn’t be able to breathe properly until Zola was cleansed off the face of the Earth.  He told Steve so.

“Then we’ll retrieve every piece of him left out there, and burn it.”  Steve’s face was close to his.  He wants to lean up into his warmth, he doesn’t.  That space needed to remain, at least until Bucky didn’t fill notebooks with his name and serial number.  Stacks of them remained in the tiny two-room apartment he acquired for himself, stacks more would come.

Being around Steve again was not ideal.  Looking at him evoked too many things at once, some warm and pure, others drenched in blood.  He didn’t think that would ever change, distancing himself was the only thing that worked.  Now there was new mission, one he felt like fire burning through him stronger than any order uttered by Alexander fucking Pierce’s poisonous mouth.  Zola.

“We’ll do it together.”  Steve states.  Non-potional, together or not at all.

“Following Captain America, again…didn’t end so well last time.”  Bucky knows its mean.  That's why he said it.

Steve puts some distance between them the secret joy on his face drops, “I’m sorry Buck.  I know its my fault, I’m sorry.”

“No its not…”  Bucky lifts himself off Steve’s bed, it smells like him, onto his feet, “I can’t stay here.”

Too fast Steve says, “I  know, I know…just, one more day.  Bucky Please, just one more day.”

One more day turns into _days_ , neither comment on it.  They move around eachother in a heartbreaking synchronicity.  Natasha brings Sam in tow to meet the man behind the mask.  Really she’s there to get a read on Bucky Barnes and notices one thing right off the bat that Steve seemed to have accepted quite happily.

Natasha tells Sam what she’s up to and gets him to take Steve into another room long for a face to face alone with their resident Winter Soldier.  They sit facing each other awkwardly on Steve’s matching sofa and recliner.  The light blue cushions felt like they were swallowing Bucky up, the Widow's presence made things no easier.

“You know what I know?”  She begins conversationally.

Bucky raised an eyebrow.

“I know you talk like that for his benefit.  Drawl your words and smile like Brooklyn hasn’t been buried by years of red room training, Hydra brainwashing and over a dozen of languages.”  Natasha was the same.  Her Russian accent was gone, the red room had done that, mastering other languages did that too over time.  Bucky spoke in a Brooklyn dialect that had died decades ago, Steve’s had started to thicken as well because of it.

“Its just an accent.”  Bucky replies in the same voice as when he met Steve for the first time at the diner.  Part Russian, part Brooklyn, not enough of either.

“We both know that’s  not true.  Matching the way someone speaks makes them comfortable, reminds them of home.  That’s how you treat a mark.”

Bucky feels a flare of anger but its not at Natasha, “You think he’s my mark?”

She shakes her head, “I think your conning someone.  It might not be Steve.  Want my advice?”

“Do I have a choice?”

Seriously Natasha says, “Now, yes you do.  Always.  Buuut I’m going to tell you this anyway:  stop trying to be Bucky Barnes and just be you.  Steve deserves that and we have a long road ahead of us.”

Bucky relaxes the barest amount, an invisible weight not being lifted but leveraged just a little.  He hears Sam tell Steve optimistically, “He looks better than I imagined.” 

“We?” Bucky asks Natasha.  Looking at her, he finally felt on level ground with someone.

“Of course.  You really think we were gonna let you and Steve run around the world with no back up?  We read the reports, Sergeant, you two can’t be trusted with your own safety.”

“You mean you don’t trust me with Steve’s safety.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Good.”

Natasha smiles, “Do you love him?”

Bucky doesn’t hesitate, “Yes.”  He means it in every way imaginable.

“Good.”

“What’s good?”  Steve asks worriedly with his head poked out of a doorway, Sam’s head right beside his, it was ridiculous looking.

Natasha and Bucky share a look, a promise, she replies, “Just clearing some things up, Rogers, let the boy roam free some.  I don’t bite…unless he asks nicely.”

Bucky doesn’t blush (Steve totally does) he smirks at her and something from long ago clicked into place, something Natasha already knew, “That’s not what I remember.”

“Well you know what they say, things change.  Walk a girl out, Sam.”

“You just got here,”  Steve complains though he doesn’t try very hard to stop them.  Natasha waves him off and takes Sam’s offered arm with a quirk of her lips.

The door was shut for a solid three seconds and Steve was already sitting where Natasha had only his demeanor was the total opposite, “Was that okay?  I know you said yes but I can’t really tell sometimes because…you don’t say much other than yes or no most days and I’m sorry I’m rambling I’m sorry.”  Steve noticed the switch in Bucky’s speech after Natasha.  He was worried it heralded bad things.  Bucky running again or worse.

“No.”  Bucky presses his lips into a self-depreciating smile and shakes his head, “It was fine.”

“You don’t sound fine.”  He wasn’t and he wasn’t going to be for a long time.

“I sound like me, Steve.”  He makes a fist with his metal hand, releases it.  The motion had become sort of therapeutic.

Steve nods, “Okay.”  He’s automatically agreeing to anything Bucky says and it get under Bucky’s skin like nothing else.

Bucky makes a decision.  Two actually at the same time.  “I’m leaving today.”

Steve panics because did he do something wrong?  Push too hard?  What happened to Bucky’s voice, was he regressing?  “Why?”

“I’ve been here too long.  I left something in Turkey for Peggy, I’m going back for it.”  He hadn’t seen Peggy since he’d been there.  His return had coincided with her's from Tony Stark's protective custody.  When Steve was around he took up the world until he was all Bucky could see our wanted to see.  There were still times in the night he stood in the dark watching the steady rise and fall of Steve’s chest as he slept pondering how easy it would be to put a knife through it.  His brain was constantly switching back and forth when Steve was around.

“I’ll go with you.”

“No.”

“Zola—”

“I’ll come back, Steve.  Apparently it’s become a thing.”

Steve cracks a smile at that, “Jesus, Buck.”

“Kinda like him, yeah.”

  It was easy to joke.  Pretending to be human was an acquired skill and Bucky remembered Natasha’s words.  He dropped the smile from his face and stopped trying to be anything so he could simply exist in that moment.  He did what he’d wanted to for a long time because now he was allowed, he would never take that for granted again.  Bucky slowly leaned forward and took Steve’s face gently in his hands, thumbs brushing over cheekbones.  Steve wasn’t breathing.  Bucky wasn’t either, he pushed the rush of images out of his head.  A fragile golden boy with bruises everywhere.  A newspaper shoved in front of his face with the headline: Captain America’s Dead.  Steve falling from the helicarrier.  Bucky presses his lips againsts Steves and they all come to a screeching halt.  The buzzing is gone. 

It's chaste, too quick and too short but also perfect.  Steve’s eyes fluttered open and Bucky’s already standing.

“See you later, punk.”  Bucky’s voice wavered somewhere between slight Russian and Brooklyn, neither is on purpose this time.  No matter how he said it the words were infused with all the love he had left in him.  There was quite a lot of that left and it surprised him.  In a good way.

Steve’s eyes are wet again, “Jerk.”

Peggy was supposed to be resting.  She would smile, nod, and agree with her nurses.  As soon as they were out of sight she did whatever the hell she wanted anyway.  Tonight she was glad her mind was clear and she had so much energy.  Bucky came in the way he always did: between blinks.  One moment there was nothing there and the next James Barnes stood there looking like Cary Grant in combat boots.

“I was worried about you.”  She says.

“I’m sorry.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

Bucky slumps in what he seemed to consider “his” chair, “Not really.”  There was no preamble with Peggy.  He didn’t have to act like anything to save feelings.

Peggy held back no punches either, “Do you still want to end your life?”

“Yes…but I won’t.”

“You don’t know how happy that makes me, James.”  She means it.

“I have things to make up for.  Evils done.  I can’t go back in time but I can do something about it now.”  The Winter Soldier was Bucky Barnes, they weren’t two separate beings, he’d always been in there through it all.  Those memories had crushed him, they still did, he could suffocate under them or use them to fuel his fire.  And there was that one other thing, “I kissed Steve.”

Peggy chuckled, “Well, there’s a reason to live right there.”

“Kisssing?”

“Love, you idiot.  Though I recall Steve not being a bad kisser.”

Bucky rolls his eyes.

Peggy spots Bucky’s travel bags, “On the road again?”

“Just for a bit.  Sometimes I have trouble…breathing?  Spaces start to close in, starts to feel like I might snap.”

“It will get better, James.  I will see you when you get back?”

“Definitely.”

“You better,”  Bucky places his hand on Peggy’s before making his way to the window, he hears Peggy as he leaves, “You better bring flowers next time too, James.”

Bucky picks up his rifle he had balanced on the fire escape and slings it to his back.  He’s buzzing again, its loud but the night sky is clear.  Stars shine bright.  He hasn’t noticed the stars in years.  The sky was open, freeing.  His trigger finger itched and he ignored it.  He was James Buchannan Barnes.  A weapon for no one but himself.  He was loved.  He was found.  He was free.  He could breathe.

 

 

End

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. All I Hear are Earthquakes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I posted the sequel to this as a second chapter rather than a part two series thingy. Enjoy! Comments are love!  
> (Also Pietro Lives, he will live forever, okay? Okay.)

 

 

All I Hear are Earthquakes

 

Steve Rogers was possibly one of the most impatient, opinionated, not-so-little punks on the planet.  But, Bucky had to say, he was impressed with the amount of restraint Steve was exercising.  He knew it had to hurt him, keeping his distance.  He knew it because as much as Bucky needed the distance it was starting to hurt him too.  Maybe it always hurt him, he’d just been too familiar with pain to realize it.   And yet when he was around Steve the incessant buzz in his mind gradually turned to a roar.  So loud he was surprised the world wasn’t shaking around them.  It made it harder to focus.  That was a problem for everyone within a mile radius.  One hundred percent of the time Bucky was holding back.  His instincts, the ingrained responses to certain situations, kill orders floating around his head like ships in the night.  All in all it was damned exhausting.  Bucky was tired, so very tired, getting pulled in so many directions while standing on shaking ground did that but there were still times when he sat at Steve’s kitchen table, one that Sam forced Steve to buy, and ached for the cold quiet of cryo.  Then he would catch that thought, swallow it down and feel sick.

Things only calmed inside him when they were all actively searching for Zola.  They met a couple of times a month, often with Sam, Clint Barton, and the Widow.  Apparently Tony Stark wanted to meet him too but he was…very much not ready to meet Tony Stark.  That kid looked nearly identical to his father.  Every time Bucky saw a glimpse of his face Bucky saw Howard’s, smirking and young at first then it morphed into gruesome horror, disbelief.  The squeal of tires would scream in Bucky’s ear and if anyone asked he could have told them the exact weight of the bottle of expensive Gin he forced down Howard’s throat as he lie bleeding next to his wife.  He’d stashed the bottle in the car’s dash and pushed the car one more time over the couple to make sure they would die before help arrived.  The murder of Howard and Maria Stark was one of the first memories he’d regained after his strings were cut from Hydra.  Tony had to know what he did, everything the Winter Soldier did went out there along with Hydra’s files.  He didn’t understand it, didn’t want to pull on that thread right now, not with Zola still on this Earth like a cancer. 

At their bi-monthly meeting the four Avengers and the one granddaddy of badass super assassins, as Clint called him unashamedly, shared information, let each other know where they were going next, and simply parted ways until they again had something useful to share.  Steve and Sam drew the swap out with warm food and subtle questions about Bucky’s well-being which Bucky responded with stone-faced indifference.  To Bucky that wasn’t being cruel, it was being kind.  He was afraid Steve wouldn’t get much sleep if he knew what Bucky had to keep on lock-down all the time.  Steve was obviously unsettled by Bucky’s unwillingness to talk about nothing unless it was mission-related and Steve was obviously looking at Bucky’s mouth like it held the answers to life, the universe, and everything.

“Jeez, Rogers,” chimed Natasha in a honeyed voice, “there are children present.”

“I know you’re talking about me,” Clint said through a mouth of hours old lasagna, “so you know I’m being the better man when I’m not engaging you.”  He mumbles something about feeding tigers under his breath.

Steve watched them bicker with a pink flush climbing his neck to the tips of his ears, Sam grinned at him.  They all knew he and Bucky had a thing.  An “I’ve loved you for nearly a century but we’ve only kissed that one time and since then you haven’t touched me at all” thing, but it was still a thing and Steve was grateful for what he had.  That didn’t stop the want of something more.  Desire burned hot through him when Bucky moved a certain way or gave him the rare upturn of lips.  Steve was aware he was terrible at hiding it and didn’t want to give Bucky another reason to drift from him so he brushes it off and brings everyone back to the mission.

“Natasha, have you decrypted those flash drives yet?”  Steve and Natasha tracked down some bases Bucky hadn’t managed to burn to cinders.  Only one was still active while Sam, Bucky, and Clint were doing the same on the other side of the world.  Natasha was the only one to get anything viable out of the computers there.  She didn’t need to say that was because she’d spent the whole of her free life tracking down the threads of her own past and at this point was pretty good at pulling something from nothing.

Natasha swiveled on her rolling chair she claimed since the kitchen table only had four chairs to the sleek laptop sitting on the counter running through millions of number combinations,  “Four, three, two, one…aaaand now it’s done.”  She sets it on her lap and begins tapping away fully aware of all the eyes in the room being directed at her.  Unfazed, Natasha keeps processing the information quietly, efficiently.

No one is eating anymore.  Bucky hasn’t even touched the food Sam insists on placing in front of him every time they meet, he never does.  He had a hard time keep most things down still but loathed to share that with anyone in the room.  His diet consisted mainly of plain water, coffee, and military surplus MRE’s which were familiar and high in calories.  He moves a little of the lasagna around the plate for Sam’s benefit but keeps his gaze locked firmly on the Widow.  Bucky takes in every twitch of her eyebrow, every time her eyes narrow, because as much as he considers her an ally—all of them really, he doesn’t trust them entirely.  It was perfectly in the realm of possibility she would keep something from him.  A long time ago she’d done just that.  It was a part of the reason he preferred to work with Sam and Barton since there was no going back on his word with Steve that he would work with them on this. He could mostly trust those two when they were on a mission—they were a helluva lot easier to read, the Widow would always have her own agenda.  Steve was hurt when he told him how he wanted their little black-ops team separated.  And on the other hand the Widow was good for Steve, she could keep him alive and knew what they were doing.  Stealthy information retrieval wasn’t exactly Captain America’s forte.

“Does the name Johann Fennhoff, or Doctor Ivchenko ring any bells?”  Natasha asks the room but it was to Bucky in particular.

A wave of nausea hits Bucky like a truck, he gasps and forms his hands into fists to prevent himself from hitting anything or anyone.  He embraces the sudden need to get space between him and Steve because the flashing images in his mind didn’t line up to the present.  His memory was telling him Steve was dead, they showed him the body they…they…lied.  Of course they lied but he hadn’t known that then.   Bucky could tell he was scratching the base programming and he wasn’t sure he liked how that felt.  Sort of like an old scar, more sensitive than the skin around it.  He focused on his breathing; Sam said that helped the people he worked with.  Bucky’s type of focus wasn’t so much as slow gentle calming down as it was him stomping on the things he didn’t want to cope with until they went away, albeit temporarily.

He hears Steve hesitantly call to him, he’s only a few feet away but it sounds like miles, “Bucky?”

The infuriating scratching doesn’t stop but Bucky is able to push it away enough that he’s moderately stable, all things considered.  He surprised by how strong his voice is in when answers, not Steve but Natasha, “I knew him.”

Three little words opened a multitude of doors that had been welded shut by the electricity of the chair.  Bucky remembered the first time he uttered them to Peirce in D.C., that wasn’t the first time they made him forget Steve.  Getting Steve burned out of him was still so much worse than what the Doctor had done.  He remembered the Doctor now too, vividly, too bright lights and soft rhythmic voices.  He’d made him see things.  Things that never happened, played with mind until he believed the lie.  Bucky held a tight leash around his anger, God, he wanted to kill someone.

The others were aware of Bucky’s shifting state, they remained unmoving, Natasha forged ahead though ignoring the glare Steve sent her way, “Care to elaborate?”

Bucky clenched his jaw and released a breath.  Carefully he sat back down to look the Widow directly in the eyes which was unnerving for everyone involved, “He was the one who helped Zola with my programming.  He was the first one they brought in after…”  He makes a dismissive hand in place of the word “torture”, doesn’t like the way the word shadows Steve’s face when he hears it and he doesn’t like the why he feels nothing when he says it.

“Another guy from back in the day, he’s not still alive too is he?”  Sam asks.

“No.”  Bucky states plainly and with the tiniest of smiles, “He’s dead.  I know.”

Clint raises and eyebrow, “And you know that because…?”

“I tore his head off.”  Bucky remembers that the most.  That’s when they switched from a psychological approach to a physical one, well, more physical.  They put him in the chair a few days after.

“Right.”  Clint says too lightly for Steve’s liking, “Good for you man.”  Clint means it.  He’d never been the vindictive sort but this mind control shit hit too close to home.  Yeah, what Loki did to him was nowhere as awful as what happened to Bucky but at least he had some beginnings of common ground with the guy.  He still had an arrow with Loki’s name on it waiting for the chance.  Literally his name on it, Kate wrote it with purple glitter nail polish, “Aesthetic” she’d proclaimed, “Revenge Aesthetic.”  Thor had told them Loki was dead and Thor would never lie to them but Clint didn’t underestimate the God of Lies himself.  Loki was still probably out there somewhere being a dick.

“Hmm,” Natasha says, “Well, his grandson isn’t.  And he’s stayed in the family business.  John Fennhoff.  He’s a psychologist, specializes in hypnosis therapy, ironic.  No direct affiliations to Hydra but he wouldn’t be on their radar if there was nothing there for them.  And they wouldn’t be so keen to put their interest in him on lockdown.”

Steve frowns, “Does that have anything to do with Zola?”

Natasha shrugs, “Could be something could be nothing, but the grandson of the guy who helped Zola form the Winter Soldier program, I’d say that’s worth checking out.”

Steve agrees and so does Bucky which automatically makes it a done deal.  Steve rounds the table to look at what Natasha is tapping away at.  He recognizes the German, understands a lot of it.  He had Gabe teach him in between missions during the war.  He catches some Russian too but that he’s mostly lost on, he’d started learning that a month ago so he could understand Bucky when he switched over languages.  Sometimes Bucky switched to a language that he had no idea what it was but more often than not it was Russian.

Steve tries not to hover over her when he asks, “Anything else worth noting?”

She grins up at him until he takes a couple of steps away, “Some base locations, most of the ones listed here our boy here already hit.  There a few I’ve never heard of though, look big, full of unfinished projects, could be promising.”

Steve wondered when Bucky had stopped being only his boy in Natasha’s mind and starting being “our boy”, it was a small turn of words but it made him feel warm in the good way.  He turns to Bucky, “Alright, Buck, what do you want to do first?”

Sam had told Steve to make sure he gave Bucky choices, especially when it came to mission environments, but he’d have asked Bucky anyway since this was basically his operation.  Bucky made the decisions on where to go and when, who went with who, and always went through any information they’d gather by himself at the end of the day.   He would gather up what he needed and head over to Peggy’s.  Every time Steve would ask Bucky if he wanted to stay with him, every time Bucky refused as cleanly as he could.

“Wilson and I will make contact with Fennhoff, the Widow, you, and Barton do recon on the new bases.”  Bucky spoke clearly with purpose.  He was not unfamiliar with leading teams and giving orders.  When he had to work with others he was often given command though his handler was never too far away.  He’d been good at it, effective.

Steve was a little taken aback  Bucky wanted to work with Sam and not him enough to ask, “I, uh, why take Sam?”

Without missing a beat Bucky replied, “I need to see him for myself, in case I do recognize him or he recognizes me.  Wilson makes up for qualities I lack in this situation.”

Sam nodded, down for anything, Steve couldn’t help but to blurt, “What about me?”

“Wilson has qualities you lack too.”  Bucky said still in that nearly robotic clipped tone he got when in “mission mode”.  Those qualities being knowing some amount of psychology and Sam was capable of gleaning information out of people in the friendliest, most subtle manner Bucky had ever experienced.  It was not wise to underestimate Sam Wilson.  Plus, Bucky’s people skills were not exactly sterling.

Sam laughed and slapped Steve on the back consoling, “Don’t worry Cap, I’ll get him home before midnight.”

Steve tried to smile, it wasn’t that great but he tried, “Okay.  We start tomorrow then.  Bright and early.”

Bucky scowled openly, “Why not tonight?”

“Because, solnyshka, its one in the morning already and some of us need our beauty sleep.”  Natasha states in no uncertain terms.  There’s an uncomfortable chill that runs through Bucky at the nickname, not fear, no it was the ghost of a memory running cold hands down his neck.  He gives a short nod vaguely in her direction.

Clint’s the first one to get up and stretch, he wraps up the rest of the lasagna and takes it with him when he goes.  Sam gives him all the extra breadsticks too and Clint says something about bird solidarity Steve doesn’t quite catch on his way out, his attentions are as always on Bucky.  Bucky never stays but he’s always the last to leave.  Steve hoped that it had more to do with wanting to be around him than Bucky being too paranoid about them tailing him to wherever it was he lived.  Natasha probably already knew but just wasn’t saying anything.  In truth he was correct on all accounts, Bucky had a hard time around Steve but seeing him was always…good.  He also didn’t trust any of them not to follow him in a small portion due to because Natasha already had once and he had to move.  She’d left a stack of Russian literature he found out he liked and a whole case of bottled water but still, boundaries.   The rest of it was just Bucky not being able to shake large bits of his training, and honestly he didn’t want to.  He got his skills in the most abhorrent ways possible but now those skills were keeping him alive and allowing him to start to make amends for the things he’d done.

Later, around five a.m., Bucky sat in his usual spot waiting for Peggy to wake up.  The woman was like clockwork, every morning around 5:10 she woke an hour before the nurses came in to check her vitals.  There were days Peggy woke up in a fog, when she’d thought he was supposed to be away with Steve and the Commandos on a mission or worse, that he was dead.  Those days were becoming less and less.  Her nurses were baffled.  Bucky wasn’t.  He had a theory, one that made him want to go at Hydra three times harder because Agent Peggy fucking Carter deserved better than Hydra messing with her brain when she should be in her own home surrounded by proud descendants not sterile needles and an army of scrub-wearing nurses who had no idea what the woman they were taking care of did for the world.

That morning Peggy woke with little trouble, a slow smile spreading across her face when Bucky came into view.  Next her eyes scoped out the small bedside table next to him where he had two cups of coffee and a bag of donuts from Peggy’s favorite place in the city, her smile turns mischievous.

“You know I’m not supposed to be having either of those, James, if the doctor came in here right now we’d get quiet an earful.”

“The doctor can eat my entire ass.”

Peggy slaps a hand over her mouth to stop the bark of laughter from being too loud and beckons Bucky to give her the coffee with the other.  Making Peggy laugh feels like the most he’s done all week worth doing.  They talk about little things at first, relatively little things at any rate.  Often times there are little pieces of memory clanging inside Bucky she can put some perspective on if it’s something she doesn’t know about she tells him to go to Steve with it, he never does and Peggy knows it but never pushes the matter.

 Their talks are a bit of a ritual to him at that point.  For some reason he told Sam about them and Sam seemed pleased?  The man had made a little aborted gesture like he wanted to pat him on the back or something, that was good thing right?  Since Sam pops into his head Bucky decides to give Peggy the run-down of their current mission just like every week.  In those moments it feels like barely anytime as passed at all, he’s just Bucky Barnes of the Howling Commandos reporting back to Ms. Carter.  It’s the most he ever talks in one sitting and he feels vaguely guilty about that.  Steve deserved more out of him, Bucky was certain of that however he wasn’t sure how to give it.

At one point Peggy asks him, “Is that really what you’re doing, James?  Amending?  Or is it avenging?”

Bucky thinks about that for a long minute, “It can’t be both?”

“Certainly, sometimes there is a crossover.  But your motives are your own, let others think what they will but they should be at least clear to _you_.  You deserve your vengeance, James, God knows you do but never let that hatred guide you.”

Bucky thins his lips and says lowly, “Easier said than done.”

“All things are, James…you’re to meet Steve again soon aren’t you?”  She huffs, irritated, “You haven’t slept all night again have you?”

“I slept on your roof.”  He replies nonplussed.

“Dear Lord, James will you stop doing that please?!” Peggy then eyed him suspiciously, “For how long?”

Bucky shifts in his chair knowing better not to lie, “Forty minutes.  Its fine, I’m functional.”  His sleeping cycles were beyond fucked.  Obviously the effect of constant cryo freeze, Bucky either slept for days straight or not at all.  Right then he was running on fumes, forty minutes mattered a hell of a lot when he hadn’t slept for going on five days.  His record was two weeks while he was with Hydra, they lost a lot of agents for that experiment.

“If Steve did the same thing would you be okay with going on a mission with him?”  Peggy asks already knowing the answer.

“Of course not.  But that’s not…he’s not…”  Bucky didn’t know if it was a knee-jerk reaction to Steve doing something stupid or the side of him that saw that as a determent to mission success, “He and I aren’t the same.”

“You two are the same coin, just different sides.  But you’re right, you’re body works differently that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the upmost care of yourself.  Functional is not the line, James.  You are not a machine, you are as human as they day I met you and I’ll be damned if you talk that way in my presence again, understood?”

“Yes, m’am.”

“Good.  Pass me that last bearclaw.”

 

Across the city Steve was starting a fresh pot of coffee with his mobile in his hand texting Sam asking him to bring breakfast.  He stared at the pot forlornly, he wasn’t sure if it was enough for both Clint and Bucky who at the very least drank coffee when it was offered and a lot of it.  Clint basically had the stuff flowing through him in place of blood.  Natasha didn’t drink anything that didn’t come in a proper expresso cup while Steve and Sam dealt with whatever they have left over at the time.

He wasn’t exactly stoked about going with Natasha and Clint on a reconnaissance mission while Sam and Bucky met with a potential Hydra informant.  However he’d made his peace with Bucky’s choices, mostly, he was work in progress okay?  He’d give Bucky whatever he needed and if he needed to not be around him, then he would hide his disappointment, anger, and sorrow like a good soldier.  Steve shook his head to himself, scoffing, he’d never been a very good soldier.  All he wanted was to take Bucky and shake him, scream, ask him to talk to him, to kiss him again, to anything really because he was living in this grey area and he couldn’t see heads or tails of anything.  Steve took a breath and shook it off.  There was a job to do.  He and Bucky were still similar in that regard, stowing their shit for the mission.

Sam hadn’t brought breakfast per se, he brought a bag of proper groceries.  Enough supplies to make pancakes, eggs, and bacon for an army.  Natasha could put away some pancakes, especially if they had chocolate chips in them and if Sam kept a bag around solely for that purpose, well then no one could really blame him.  Tony had pissed her off once so bad he went and tried to win back her sort-of affections with a giant chocolate babushka doll filled with perfectly sized smaller dolls.  It had worked.  Sam wasn’t trying to win any affections he was just trying to make a team full of inherently broody people a little bit of happy before they went off to fight murderous octopus fetishists.  If only Bucky would eat pancakes or anything really.  He tried not to take of offense to it because, hell, he understands but those were his mom’s recipes damnit.  And it didn’t help that kid was growing on him, he wanted him to healthy okay? Sam wasn’t sure who exactly he was all of the time, whether or not he was the Winter Soldier or Bucky Barnes but he was starting to think the line where one ended and the other began wasn’t so clear cut as they had all believed.

Sam is barely done mixing up the batter when Bucky appears behind him with a disapproving look already firmly on his face and damn, the “Captain America disapproves frown” Steve liked to sport looked a lot like the Bucky Barnes disapproves frown.  He had to wonder whose it belonged to first, he had a suspicion it was Bucky.

“Don’t look at me like that man, we all aren’t super soldiers, like I keep reminding you people.  The rest of us need breakfast.  It’s the most important meal of the day and I’m gonna need all the energy I can get to keep up with you.”  Sam finishes mixing and pours a perfect circle into a hot skillet.

Bucky opens his mouth as if to say something only to snap it shut when Steve barges in curious who Sam was talking to.  He see’s Bucky and a sad smile blooms across his face, “Ya know, I have a front door Buck.”

Nobody mentions the fact Steve leaves his windows unlocked for that very purpose.  Bucky never uses the door he always just sort of materializes out of shadow and coffee fumes.  Natasha and Clint will use the windows too sometimes and Sam very pointedly latches his windows at his home very securely.

“Habit.”  Bucky says, surprising Sam and Steve.  He usually doesn’t answer non-questions like that.  The sad leaves Steve’s face just a little and Bucky doesn’t say anything else but the inner him while not exactly cheering was sort of quietly pleased.  Yeah, Bucky was definitely going to start aiming for that feeling.

Natasha and Clint show up together a half hour later, the only thing still cooking was the bacon, the pancakes are gone before they’re done.  Natasha gives Sam and Bucky the address and personal information of Doctor Fennhoff and brings a map with the coordinates of the new hydra bases marked on it, laying it out on Steve’s coffee table she smirks at him and says, “I know how much you love maps.”  Bucky’s brain gives him a movie reel of Steve pointing out bases on a huge war table, he remembered the way Steve tried to appear authoritative and serious only to break out in a wide grin when Phillips was out of sight.  Then the moment is gone, shuttered to a stop and clamped down hard behind rusty metal walls.  The Steve he had now wasn’t acting any more, Bucky hated himself for it.

“Stark offered a couple of jets--,” Clint says.

Bucky stiffens immediately at Stark’s name, “You report to him?”

“What? Hell no, I gave him some vague details about going after some Hydra bases but that was it bro, no worries.  Tony’s always up for Hydra ass-kicking.  I didn’t tell him about you or Zola, I figured we’d need some rides though.”

“If things go south on either end it’ll have a domino effect for the other team.” Natasha soothes and adds with an amused grin, “I think that’s the closest we’ve ever gotten to an extraction plan Barton.”

“I know, it hurts my heart a little just thinking about it.  Rhodey’s in D.C. too by the way, Tony more or less volunteered him to give us some hush hush landing space.”

Bucky huffed, “Fine.”

“Teams are nice, huh Barnes?” Clint asked totally expecting the seething silent glare Bucky sent his way.  Clint might have had a problem with feeding tigers but was apparently fine with poking bears.  Bucky would never say it but he appreciated the way Clint treated him, not like he was a landmine about to go off or like he was made of glass.  Whether he really was either of those things was debatable even to him but he…appreciated the effort.  Then again it was entirely possible Barton didn’t have a bone of self-preservation in his body.

Steve shot Bucky a worried glance, “You’re sure you’re okay with this?”

Bucky gave a jerky nod which more than enough for Steve.  He’d been with Bucky long enough since he came back to him to know the smallest gestures meant a lot.  Going on another mission without Bucky there beside felt like tearing stitches out, stitches that sowed themselves back over his wounds whenever he saw Bucky again, the meantime was what hurt like hell.

They suited-up literally and metaphorically the same way they did for any mission.  To Steve it felt a little like being with S.H.I.E.L.D. again only without the watchful eye of Nick Fury peering over his shoulder.  He was pretty certain Natasha had ways of still contacting Fury.  He didn’t know if she was though, after Fury excluding her from the short-list of people he could trust with his not-dying Steve had a feeling she wouldn’t be telling him anything just yet.  Even Black Widows had the right to be hurt.  He didn’t know how Fury would react to them working with the Winter Soldier with the whole getting shot through the heart thing.  Steve was thinking not very well but when he asked Natasha if she was okay with working with Bucky she’s simply shrugged, glanced at Clint and said, “What a couple of bullet holes between friends?”

Rhodey was waiting for them at the airfield, which had been cleared out on “Avengers’ Orders” which was a thing apparently, in his military greens and a bright smile for Cap and Sam.  He still gave Natasha a wide respectful birth and a “hello m’am” while Clint received a pinched-face look that spoke of a long list of past wrongs.

When Rhodey came face to face with Bucky Barnes his first words were, “Holy shit.”  Followed up a slow few seconds later by Rhodey straightening to a rigid line and giving a wide-eyed Bucky a salute, “Honor to meet you Sergeant.  It’s good to see one of our own back home.”

All Bucky can do is stare, he swallows with a dry throat then slowly raises his flesh arm to salute back.

Rhodey smiles widens and he turns on a heel, leading them further into the open areas of the airfield where two quinjets sat cloaked.  Bucky couldn’t see them but he could _feel_ them.  The way the wind was disturbed by two large objects, the smell of the kind of jet fuel that didn’t go into any common military aircrafts.

“I gotta tell you, the guys here were pissed when I cleared the space for the Avengers.  Mostly because they’re a bunch of whiny kids that wanted to meet Iron Man, which I took offense to by the way.  War Machine right in front of them and they want to meet Iron Man, unbelievable.”

“We appreciate you War Machine.”  Clint says in mock-seriousness.

“You and me aren’t talking yet Barton.  I never forget, I never forgive.  Your time is coming Hawkeye.”  Rhodey promises menacingly.

Bucky kind of wants to ask, doesn’t but still sort of wants to.

“Rude.”

“Your face is rude.”

“Boys.”  Chimed Natasha effectively putting an end to their back and forth.

“Sorry, m’am.  The keys are in the ignitions and all that.  Tony would say bring ‘em back in one piece but these come out of his pocket so, ya know, I don’t actually care.”

The team going their separate way from there didn’t feel as weird as it might of.  Clint and Natasha subtly bracketed Steve with their bodies corralling him into their jet so he didn’t take too long staring at Bucky’s retreating back longingly.  Cap’s team was headed to Tibet first.  Most of the new Hydra base locations were in the Middle East and Asia.  Sam and Bucky on the other hand would be in for the relatively short trip to Wyoming.  The trick would be asset collection if it was necessary.

“Mind if I take the wheel?”  Sam asks Bucky as soon as the bay doors of the jet closes.  He’d wanted to drive one of these things since he saw them at the Triskellion, at the time that really shouldn’t have been his prevailing thought but combat situation were a different animal.  Time existed between breaths and you would be surprised the kinds of shit you could think of in that short span.

Bucky didn’t respond verbally, he flopped down in the co-pilot’s seat and kicked his feet up.  The picture of fabricated relaxation.

Sam chuckled, “You know man, you don’t have to do that.  That whole veneer of clam thing, I mean.  Nobody here to convince.”

The ex-assassin closes his eyes and that’s the end of the conversation.  Bucky doesn’t think he’s trying to convince anyone of anything but the whole world was intent on telling him otherwise.  Natasha had called him out on it a while back, Sam seemed to think a version of the same.  But it wasn’t calm Bucky was faking, if anything it was quiet.  An illusion of quiet when he felt like he was screaming, should be screaming.  He doesn’t sleep the ride to Wyoming, Sam knows it and he knows Sam knows but they sit in their respective seats without a word while Bucky keeps his eyes screwed shut tight and imagines what the world would be like if the roar  inside him was gone.  Peaceful, maybe.   He trusts Sam enough to get them there in one piece and to not shoot him in the back of the head while he let his guard down.  Sam would call that progress.

They land in a field surrounded by extremely put-out cattle less than a mile out from the town John Fennhoff lived in.  Fennhoff’s office was in the capital however an at home approach seemed like the more effective option.  Bucky saw it as more direct and efficient; Sam saw it as there being a lesser chance of collateral damage if worse came to worse.  He really wasn’t expecting the worse to roll around, after all Steve, Clint, and Natasha got the more dangerous half of the mission however Sam had learned that in the company of the super-powered anything could and would probably happen.  So he wasn’t expecting the worse but he was definitely expecting something. 

What they got was nothing.  The small town of Silver Springs was a ghost town.  Cars were parked in front of stores with open signs showcased in their front windows but were absent of people in either.  Sam and Bucky walked down the deserted town streets expecting a parade or some other Norman Rockwell shit.  It was a lot less Norman Rockwell and a lot more Norman Bates.  Something was very wrong and they both knew it.  Sam drew his sidearm, Bucky took point in front of him and they slipped into the back alleys of the town figuring to go ahead with their original plan of finding the good Doctor because they doubted the empty town and a possible Hydra loyalist were unrelated.

The empty houses, kid’s toys left to lie in the yard, it was all very disconcerting and when even the Winter Soldier—the most metal dude in history, was unsettled Sam had to worry.  They stopped one house away from Doctor Fennhoff’s and ducked behind it, fully aware that this felt like a trap.  That begged the question, if that’s what this was how the hell did Fenhoff find out they were coming?  The Doctor’s house was a simple two-story with a wrap-around porch.  Sam supposed it was too much to ask for the bad guys to look like bad guys?  This anybody could be an evil murderous asshole thing was wearing a bit thin.

“Stay here.”  Bucky says to him in a tone that says he expects Sam to go along with the order.

Sam hastily steps in front of Bucky before he can leave his side,“Oh, I don’t think so kid.”  Putting himself between the Winter Soldier and a mission, Sam realizes, not a great plan but he’s not about to let Bucky lone-wolf this.

“The reasoning is strategically sound.”  Bucky deadpans.

“That’s your shady way of saying let you handle it because you think I’ll be in your way.  So let me tell you this right now: I’m a soldier too.  I’m gonna have you’re back out there whether you like it or not.”

Bucky rolls his eyes after a solid few seconds of soundless glowering and for some reason Sam finds that hilarious, “ _Fine_ , mudak.”

“I don’t know what that means but it sounds not-nice.”

“I must have skipped that class at Hydra assassin school.”  The words slip out of Bucky and he doesn’t think about them.  He’s vaguely aware that Steve would disapprove of joking about Hydra but he’s more than sure if anyone deserves the right it was himself, and it just feels right.

“Apparently not smart-ass class.”

“I never needed a class for that.”

“I don’t doubt that, Barnes.” Sam checks the clip in his gun more out of careful habit than real need, “Let’s go ring the doorbell.”

They didn’t ring the doorbell, they knocked.  Bucky used his metal hand and put dents in the door wherever he drummed his knuckles.  Sam shot him an “are you serious” look Bucky blatantly ignored—not for the dents but for the actual knocking.  Bucky knew if this was a set-up the Doctor already knew they were there and if it wasn’t at least they would only scare Fennhoff _half_ to death so they could still feasibly get information out of him.

There was no answer, of course, so Bucky traded knocking for ripping the doorknob right off.

“This why you use Steve’s window isn’t it?” 

Bucky didn’t deem Sam’s question worthy of an answer.  The buzzing in Bucky’s head was soft and low, the mission at the forefront of his mind: the target.  The Bucky Barnes Steve knew was a lot easier to find in combat situations.  The motions were always easy to go through and sometimes the words or thoughts would follow even before Steve broke through the programming on the helicarrier.  He never felt more like who he was supposed to be than when he was being someone he wasn’t supposed to be.  He sensed the near-quiet on his peripheral, and let it guide him forward.

 Bucky was the first through the door and Sam was plenty cool with that.  Bucky had a matching set of glocks strapped to his thighs but he armed himself with a KA-BAR knife in his right hand in the close-quarters.  Sam cleared corners and Bucky checked the rooms after he was done.  The house looked like the furniture and the style had been cut and pasted out of some sort of home and country magazine however the first thing the pair really noticed was the strong smell of formaldehyde that only got stronger as they approached the kitchen.

They stopped at a small door between the gleaming kitchen counters and the refrigerator.  Bucky motioned downward and indicated a one with a metal finger.  One person was in the basement through the door if the cold air wafting up from behind the door was any indication.  Bucky could hear heavy breathing and the soft clinking of glass resonating from below his feet too and Sam braced himself—ready to go down S.W.A.T. style, and oh man did they ever.  Bucky kicks the door in but that’s putting it lightly, he blows that door into chunky splinters.  Pieces of wood are lodged into the walls just before the staircase drops down into what looks like to Sam a very dark abyss.  Sam’s eyes adjust quickly and he can make out a faded greenish hue from a light source that Bucky must be able to see fine by because he’s down the stairs already totally unafraid of what he’s stepping on.  Then again maybe that’s just the way Bucky walked, fearless.  Sam knew better than most that the line between fearless and not giving a fuck whether you lived or died was a thin one.  He could hazard a guess which one Bucky was.  He would be there to help the kid off that ledge if Bucky would allow it for now Sam’s job was to follow him over it.

They rushed down the steps like a controlled wrecking ball.  Intimidation was actually a decent tactic if the person on the other end was capable of human emotion and when they reached the bottom of the steps ready to put a hole in anything that moved wrong Sam and Bucky both knew that Doctor John Fennhoff was definitely not that kind of person.  The giveaway was the human brains suspended in tanks full of green liquid lining metal shelves.  The Doctor sat with his surprisingly broad back to them tapping away at a keyboard and glancing up at the panorama screens depicting different views of the town, some of them very personal views.

“I’m going to take a shot in the dark here,” Sam says cocking his gun, “and say this dude’s probably Hydra.”

A smooth voice hitched in a pleasant deep timbre replied, “We are all hydra, Mr. Wilson.  Or at least we were once all Hydra.”

“Whatever you say, crazy.”  Sam angled himself closer to a very stiff Bucky.

The Doctor turned, he was kind-looking like he could be someone’s favorite teacher, and spoke directly to Bucky, “I was worried for some time after Hydra fell.  I knew eventually you would be here, for me, but I didn’t know whether it would be the Winter Soldier or not. Because if it was going to be the Winter Soldier I knew I was going to die, so I made arrangements.  Then I discovered that you are with the Avengers and that, well, that gave me options.”  He slowly reached behind him to his keyboard with his other hand up in surrender.  All the screens shifted to a field of yellow flowers full of people lined up in rows, hundreds of people including kids.  They all had a gun to their heads or a knife pressed dangerously hard against their throats.

“Shit.” Sam spat but he didn’t lower his weapon.

Bucky’s face was blank, he didn’t look at the screens for more than a second but the grip he had on his knife would have a crushed a cheaper made blade.  His voice was a little on the Russian accent side when he spoke, “Zola, where is he?”

Fennhoff laughed, rich and full, “Arnim Zola?!  He is here of course, in this very room!”

“Yeah, so is the Winter Soldier you were so scared the shit of.  Let those people go and answer his questions because I can’t really stop him from doing what he feels like and I don’t think I really want to.”

Fennhoff doesn’t look impressed, “Hmm, I don’t think so.  The Winter Soldier alone and the Winter Soldier working alongside the Avengers, those are two different animals.  In particular your interaction with Steve Rogers, it proves Zola has failed in part.  That your mind is stronger than his influence, that is fascinating really but I’m afraid these theatrics are not just for show.  You will let me go or all of those lives out there will be lost.  Is one man really worth that many dead?”

Bucky takes a menacing step forward, knife at the ready but Sam steps in and puts a steady hand on Bucky’s shoulder, “Barnes, we can’t.”

“Ridding the world of Zola for good is more important.  It’s the mission.”  Bucky tells him like it’s the most obvious thing.  Fennhoff chuckles again.

Sam snaps, “Something funny?”

“To me, yes.  Gentlemen, this situation is simple.  This town, is mine.  The people here are completely under my control—the culmination of my life’s work you see.  My experiments will revolutionize everything the philistines in my field think they know.” He makes a grand gesture to the metal shelves stocked with human brains, “They are completely innocent otherwise and it would be a shame for them to meet such bloody ends for one soldier’s pride.  I am leaving and you will let me, I simply wanted to see you for myself.  Consider my curiosity sated.”

Sam keeps one eye on Bucky, when Bucky’s placid face breaks into a grin Sam honestly feels the pit of his stomach fall because Sam had already said it: he couldn’t stop Bucky from doing anything.  Not without Steve who happened to be thousands of miles away out of comm reach and maybe not even then.  He tightens his grip on Bucky’s shoulder and then…then he follows Bucky’s line of sight which he notices isn’t on the posturing doctor anymore but the screens behind him.  It’s hard to see through the filtering of the cameras and if he blinked Sam would miss what had Bucky in an honest to God smile.  A blue blur streaks through the rows of people disappearing their weapons and restraining their arms behind their backs with something as it went.  The children disappeared from the screen all together and it all went down in a matter of seconds.  The doctor’s leverage was gone and he hadn’t realized it yet.

Sam finally let’s go of Bucky, “You know what? Never mind, you do you bro.”

The Doctor looked taken aback, “What?”  He whips his head around, which was just a dumb as hell thing to do Sam thought with the Winter Soldier in the room, and frantically bashed buttons.  He blinks at the monitors confused but ultimately, not defeated.

Bucky closes the space between him and the doctor, he notices the Doc looks a lot like his granddaddy around the eyes so that’s where Bucky punches him, “I don’t have any pride left.  But it ain’t my pride you need to be worried about.”  The words were zero Russian badass and a hundred percent pissed off Brooklyn boy, Sam imagined what Steve’s face would look like if he were with them.  Heart eyes probably.

Fennhoff was forced down back into his chair by Bucky’s metal arm.  The man still smiled like he had no worries even with a fist-sized bruise darkening the whole of his right eye and an obviously broken cheek bone.  Blood streamed down one nostril coloring his smile and giving the mean stretch of lips a more sinister edge.  The restraint Bucky had shown by not putting his fist clear through the man’s face was more impressive than the damage he’d actually done.

“Zola.  Now.”  Bucky reiterated with a hard squeeze of Fennhoff’s arm.  He didn’t quite break the bone but it was a near thing.

The Doctor gasped, “You’ll not want to be doing that, Soldier.  You’re going to need my extremities in working order.”

“The only thing we need in working order is your mouth,” replies Sam in a hard tone, “and you seem to be doing pretty well on that front.”

The Doctor ignored him, “If you want to get rid of Zola, you need me.  I am the only one left on this Earth who can…and not kill you in the process of course.”

Bucky released his hold like he’d been burned, “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” He hisses fiercely.

Spitting blood, Fennhoff straightens, “I’ll tell you about Zola and then you’ll understand you miserable waste.  My father was the caretaker of the last vestiges of Zola’s mind.  Much went into the S.H.I.E.L.D. databank but Zola’s _heart_ was put into a single indestructible microchip.”  He starts to giggle, really giggle full of manic glee and awe, “And guess, toy soldier, guess where Zola decided to hide himself away for safe-keeping?”

Brazenly the Doctor stands then taps his finder on Bucky’s head.  “Even Hydra didn’t know, they just thought it was another piece of hardware for you.  I’m the only one with the training to remove the chip, it being so wired into your brain.  Tell me, can you feel him there behind your eyelids?  Does he speak to you?  I’ve always wondered.”

“Fuck.”  Sam eloquently summarized.  Bucky was white as a sheet, he was too still, and it was hard for Sam to tell if the kid was breathing or not.

Bucky was in fact breathing, he’s forcing himself to.  Air slowly in, air slowly out shallow and cold because if he doesn’t do that he’ll do something else.  Something aweful.  He wants to tear the doctor apart, scream that he’s lying, because he knows he’s not.  _He knows_.  The buzzing of a thousand worlds shaking inside him is so loud and now he’s got some idea what that was, who that was.  He swallows the bile rising in his throat and fights the urge to split open his head right then and get it out, get it out, get it out.  Get.  It.  Out.  Bucky doesn’t really feel himself take his knife and shove it into the doctor’s temple.  Sam’s talking to him but the words get lost in the buzzing.  He lets the other man remove his grip from the knife handle and gently steer him away.  The horror of realizing Fennhoff was probably right in saying he was the only one that could get the chip out of him hit Bucky hard, he wasn’t sure if he killed him because there was no way in hell he was going to let the Doctor lay his hands on him or if it was some latent way of the microchip protecting itself.

They’re walking away and the sound inside him is starting to come to heel a little.  He vaguely registers leaving the soft glow of green behind and trading it for warm afternoon sunlight.  There’s whoosh in front of his face Bucky only barely keeps himself from striking out at only because he knows who it is.

“Good to see you,” Sam says when the blur stops to become a figure, “Barton send you?”

Pietro Maximoff scoffs, “As if.  Clint cannot order me around.  Natasha asked me to come.”  He gives Bucky an once-over but says nothing.  They’d never met, at least as far as Sam knows.

“So Natasha can order you around?”  Sam asks, he’s still guiding Bucky to the quinjet for lack of a better place to go and Pietro is following them.

“Of course.  I already died once this year, I do not wish to relive the experience.”

“I can relate.”  Bucky grumbles, he leans away from Sam and starts walking on his own.

Sam doesn’t hide his shock, after all that he’d been expecting catatonia but Bucky Barnes was full of surprises, “You alright man?”

“No.”

“I know you don’t want to, but I think we should get you to the Tower.  Tony can be an ass but he’s the smartest guy I know and he’s got the equipment to…to do whatever you want.”

Bucky agrees.  He doesn’t really have a choice.  They need to get there soon or else he needed to be locked up or taken out.  Natasha could probably do it if he didn’t see it coming.  She would if he needed to be, Bucky trusted that.  On the other hand who knew what Tony Stark could or would do.  Help him get the chip out of his head?  Maybe.  Leave him to die on the operating table because Bucky had killed his parents?  To him there was just as equal chance for that.  God, he wanted to see Steve.

“C’mon man, let’s get the hell out of here.”

Pietro tells them on the way to the Tower the people of the town were safe and very confused as to what they were all doing.  When Bucky killed the Doctor it was like their cords were cut but they seemed to be mostly okay.  The Avengers would send a clean-up crew to make sure.  They radio in the PG version of the day’s events to Tony and Steve before they reach the Tower.  Hours later Tony and Wanda are waiting for them when they land on the Tower’s helipad.

“Welcome to home base Terminator,” Tonye rubs his hands together and Bucky wasn’t prepared for a Stark that was quiet so…caffeinated, “Let’s get you down to the lab for some full body scans and then we can see about cracking that melon open.”

Bucky just stands there and doesn’t say anything.  Pietro appeared to be having a full conversation with his sister by using just their eyes and Sam tried not to face palm because Tony Stark had zero tact.

“Or we could wait for Steve to get here.”  Sam eventually offers.

“That’s going to be hours.”  Tony complains.  Sam stares him down until he huffs, “Have it your way Falcon Punch, I’mma make some more coffee.  Wander free children.”

“Wait.”  Bucky says and Tony stops in his tracks, “The scans, let’s do them now.”

Sam raises an eyebrow, “Are you sure?”

Bucky was sure.  Before they get started Tony says, “My old man talked about Steve, a lot.  But he talked about you a lot too, said you were the only commando willing to grab a drink with him.  He considered you a friend.  What I’m saying is…if you ever wanted to, ya know, the bar’s behind me back there.  Drinks are on me anytime you want.”  That was the closest Tony ever got to an “I forgive you”, Bucky thought it was more than he deserved.

Bucky wanted Steve to be there when they cut him but he knew he could handle some scans on his own and he did.  Sam went with them though he kept a respectful distance.  Tony talked.  He did that Bucky noticed, he seemed nervous.  Stark wasn’t the most cuddly person but he had a more caring way about him Howard never possessed.  He maneuvered Bucky wherever he needed him, asking permission for every simple touch, while a holographic work-up of his internal system materialized in blue right next to him.  The metal arm wasn’t the only non-organic parts in Bucky.  There were multiple enhancements at the stress points of his body, Tony explained it like they were like extra support particularly for his legs.  Tony’s computers confirmed Bucky had a serum similar to Steve and that the arm was connected to his nervous system.  A few of his ribs, upper vertebra, and left clavicle were actually all metal fused with bone.  Tony had a dark expression that only seemed to get darker at every little fact he listed off for Bucky.  He was doing it that way so Bucky knew at all times what he was doing and what had been done to Bucky since Bucky didn’t really know the full extent.

Tony muttered something about “butchers” and knocked back the cold coffee he still had in his cup.  Next Tony focused the scans solely on Bucky’s brain, it didn’t take long to locate the chip, “It’s pretty advanced, not as advanced as that arm but definitely more impressive than anything they had in the seventies.  I’m hundred percent sure I can get this thing out of you with minimal damage.  Eh, well, at least nothing that super serum couldn’t take care of any way.”

No one see’s what happens next coming.  Bucky jolts and then his hand is around Stark’s neck, he can’t stop himself or hear anything beyond the sound vibrating down to his very core.  He’s going to kill another Stark and Jesus, why didn’t Steve kill him when he had a chance? Why didn’t that dumb punk ever do the smart thing? Suddenly an inky red floods his vision.  His world goes dark and calm and safe.  The voice of a young woman is speaking to him in, Sokovian?  Yeah, that was Sokovian.  It was almost Russian the way the r’s rolled and how no matter how hard the consonants were the word also sounded so intimate.  He sleeps a dreamless, painless sleep.

When Bucky wakes up he’s afraid.  The list of fears was a long one, over them all he’s afraid because he’s strapped down and can’t move.  There a pain in his head that’s he’s never felt before and someone is holding his hand too tight.  Steve.  Bucky’s eye’s flutter open to see Steve inches away from him with a terrified look on his face but he’s not alone.  Over his shoulder stands Sam, Clint, the Widow, and even the Maximoff twins.  He learns later that Wanda was the one who puts him out, he thanks her but also add her to the list of people that could probably kill him.  It’s weird that the list growing one person longer gave him comfort.  Stark is puttering around behind him.  Bruises decorate his neck which he professes are nothing and he’s fine, “please stop looking like that oh my god.”  Tony had the chip taken out which accounted for the pain.

“Sorry about that.  Would have asked but you were unconscious and wanted to kill me so…fair’s fair.  Chip has a survival protocol, pretty sophisticated stuff.  And some kind of homing beacon, the frequency went back to that Fennhoff fucker’s house.”  Tony’s voice is slightly raspy, “I can probably—”

Steve let’s go of Bucky to snatch the chip away from Tony, “No.”  Steve crushes the chip in his hands, surprised by how much effort he has to put into it to make the chip cave.

“Well then, that’s that.  So, you still feelin’ all murdery, Barnes?”  Tony didn’t hold a grudge over getting a little roughed up.  If he did he would have like, zero friends.

“Not more than usual.”  Bucky manages.  The pain in his head fucking sucks, a lot, more importantly behind that pain there was nothing.  The sound was gone, no buzzing or scratching at the walls of his mind.  So quiet.  No body mentions that he’s crying.  Sure he can feel the hot tears flow down his cheeks but he can hardly help it.  It’s been so long since the only thing he heard inside him was himself.

He’s not fixed.  Not the way he wants to be but won’t ever be.  He just feels lighter, it’s easier to push away some of the darker parts of the programming.  Like the part that tells him Steve Rogers is walking around when he should not be.  Steve yanks the restraints off him and pulls him into a hug.  Bucky clings to Steve.  He can feel his heartbeat hammering in his chest and Bucky clutches him all the tighter for it.  Neither of them care they have an audience.

“Stevie?”  Bucky whispers into Steve’s neck.

“Yeah, Buck?”

“I want come home.”

Steve’s breath hitches, “Okay, Bucky, okay.”

Home turns out to be a brand new apartment in Brooklyn.  Bucky had stayed with Steve in D.C. for a few weeks supposedly taking it easy while he healed from the surgery until he asked out of the blue if Steve would live with him in New York.  Steve had almost everything he owned packed up by the end of the day.  It was that easy and that hard.  Being around Steve was easier than it used to be but it still wasn’t easy by any means.  Both of them were back and forth between the two cities so much that Steve kept his apartment in D.C. for when they were there.  They started visiting Peggy together once in a while but not always.  Bucky still would leave sometimes, never for a significant amount of time but Steve understood because Bucky had explained to him one night what it felt like to be pulled toward something because of the programming.  Unfinished orders hanging above him like a guillotine.  Every time he leaves Bucky pulls Steve in for a minute, let’s Steve hold him even when he feels like his skin is itching all over.  

Their second kiss they share at Clint’s house in Bed-stuy.  Clint and his neighbors are gathered all on the roof grilling hotdogs and laughing.  Natasha and the twins are there too, chatting in Sokovian and drinking what Bucky knows they call shitty American beer.  Pietro gives him a jaunty little wave when he spots Bucky.  The two get along better than any of the Avengers thought they would, it freaks Clint out.  Bucky is sitting on the ledge of the roof far from the others letting his feet dangle in the air.  He’s trying not to count off all the perfect sniper shots from his position when Steve plops his ass right next to him.  He hands Bucky a beer, there’s a soft happy look on his face Bucky is proud of.  He did that.  He did that for the most important person in his life and he was allowed to be proud of that.

“You okay Buck?”

Bucky stops kicking his feet back and forth and really thinks about that, “Right now am.”  He isn’t always and he’s learning that that’s nothing to be ashamed of.  His brand of fucked up was a horror story compared to a lot of other people’s but right then in that moment he was okay.  Better than okay.

Steve ducks his head smiling wider, “That’s good.”

Bucky tsks at the beer in his hands, “Why are you even drinking that?”

“Makes things less awkward for other people.” Steve shrugs.

“You hate the taste don’t you?”

“So, so much.”  Steve groans tossing his head back.

Bucky revels in that sound and grabs the collar of Steve’s shirt smirking at the yelp he makes when Bucky drags him forward.  Bucky kisses him hard, snaking his tongue inside’s Steve mouth and moaning at the sensation.  Steve brings his hand behind Bucky’s head and presses him even closer.  They keep it up until the need for air makes their lungs burn.

“Better than the beer?”  Bucky asks.

Steve laughs, “Smooth.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Well, they were lying.”

Bucky leans again and says against Steve’s lips, “Wanna bet?”

“Um…” Wanda’s voice interrupts whatever plans Bucky was formulating, “Dinner is ready.”  She looks truly apologetic and a little bit otherworldly in her red summer dress and long dark hair.

Bucky smiles softly at her and tell her in her mother tongue they’ll be right there.

“C’mon punk.  You’re fans are waiting.”

Steve shakes his head, “Jerk.”

Before they get to the main crowd Bucky catches Steve’s hand one last time, “I can’t remember if I ever…but I should say it again.  I should say it every fucking day—”

“Bucky—”

“I love you.”

Steve pulls him in and plants another kiss on Bucky’s lips, “I love you, too.”  Bucky never stops counting the kisses.

Clint holding a grilling fork with three hotdogs on it yells, “Get your own roof for that!”

“Or don’t, I don’t mind.” Natasha leers openly making Clint give a scandalized sound. 

They all sit down in a semi-circle, Pietro between Wanda and Clint, Bucky between Natasha and Steve and they know tomorrow the world might break again.  Or combust or some other generally terrible happenings that are bound to go down eventually.  For the night Bucky can just enjoy their company and text Sam embarrassing photos of Steve.  Bucky’s feet never felt more sure-footed, rooted in the earth and solid.  No shaking and no sound just more love than he deserved and a whole slew of shit to make up for.  He was up for it.  Bucky remembered Peggy saying to him once that he was given a second chance and he shouldn’t waste it.  It had been hard to see everything that happened to him as a second chance.  Perspective was a bitch like that. No matter what nightmare laid in wait for him Bucky now trusted he would wake up and Steve would be there. 

James Buchannan Barnes, previously of the 107th, James Buchannan Barnes.  Bucky would never get tired of repeating to himself.  Steve pressed into his side and laughed a full-body laugh at a joke Pietro made at Clint’s expense of course.  Bucky leaned back into him and Steve threw his arm around Bucky at the unspoken permission.  He would never get tired of that either.  Never.

 

end

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I was thinking about doing a sequel to this. I left the whole hunt for Zola thing out there so I dunno, what do you guys think?


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